How to change my IP address

Anybody else thinking here that MAC cloning is not something we would want to suggest to a novice user?

 

Agreed. I would only suggest reading about that feature in your router documentation. However, nowadays, most cable internet providers do not rely on mac addres authorization anymore. For example, at one time, if you had a cable internet account, to use that service at any house w/ cable service, you had to bring your modem to the house as well as your pc. Now, all you have to do is connect your modem at any house & you have cable internet on any comuter connected to the modem. But today, cable internet providers authorize based on the mac address of the modem, not the network adapter.

 

It helps to understand just what a proxy server is. It is basically a server with a huge Temporary Internet Files cache. Thus you view sites that are cached instead of the real site. If the site you request is not in the ccache, the proxy server makes a connection to that site & retrieves the content for you. It is sort of a relay inbetween you & the www. Thus, if you have your internet account configured to use a proxy server, or go to certain proxy server websites to login & browse the www, then the sites you request "see" the ip address of the proxy & your ip is obscured. However, you cannot choose your ip address. And sites will know that the ip they see is the ip of the proxy.

 

Proxy servers are known because all one need do is check the server logs and view the traffic from ips, then do whois lookups on the suspect ip and determine if a proxy or not. The Apache web server default config is setup to disallow proxy servers from caching content. Most sites don;t care about proxy servers anyway.

The main thing for you to realize that no matter what you do, you cannot completely obscure your real ip address because it is assigned by your isp. Your isp owns a range of ip addresses. Let's say your isp owns 68.100.1.255 - 68.100.35.255. Your modem is provisioned by your isp. Thus, that isp provisioned modem will only work on the isp network. When accessing anything on the www, your transmission goes out through your isp network first. The data packets contain your ip address. If your ip address is not in the range of addresses owned by the isp then you will have no connection, the isp routers and gateways will reject your requests. Thus you need to have a legit isp assigned ip address.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but why are you determined to be able to change your ip address? Your real ip address cannot ever be associated with who you are UNLESS there is a criminal investigation whereby the authorities obtain records from your isp. That is why most "annonymous surfing" proxy servers are not located in the US, they are in countries where the US has little influence over the law.

 

OK, I understand.
It's not so bad having the same ip address for extended periods of time. In fact, it is desirable if have a router and use programs like pcanywhere, ftp servers, www servers, etc. In such cases, a static ip from the isp is best.