phish - regarding the MAC spoofing many routers allow it so that you can set up a home network. For example - officially I am supposed to set up a seperate cable for each computer I have connected tot he net - clearly this is damn expensive. The router allows me to take on the MAC of the PC which I have registered with the cable company - thus fooling the cable company that I only have one PC connected to the cable when in fact I have anything up to 4 (but currently only 2) connecting. Clearly then the router is supposed to take on the MAC from the registered PC not from the cable modem.

Tiger is right - this used to be common so that cable companies could sell more IP addresses - but with the ever decreasing costs of bandwidth these days this is not so much of a problem as it used ot be. Many cable companies are therefore allowing you to set up home LANs with 5 computers (my cable company for example now allows me to register up to 5 MAC addresses - it used to only allow one to be registered)

I'd go with Tigers suggestion of upgrading the firmware as it sounds like the router has its brains muddled a little - it shouldn't cause a conflict like that just by spoofing the MAC

Z