"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
At one time, and maybe now, virgin only allowed one MAC address to
access the internet

That would be a sure way to keep or win new customers. ;-)
I've had broadband for a long time and never had that restriction.

It came about because back then, you had to connect a PC directly to the
Virgin modem to set up & activate your account, and technically only that
PC's MAC address could go online. I say "technically" because you would
subsequently plug a router into the modem instead, and set up the router to
give the modem whatever MAC address you chose - a single click would "clone"
your PC's MAC address onto the router. By making the modem think it was
still connected to the PC rather than the router, you could connect as many
machines via cable or wifi to the router and they'd all have net access.

I do remember in the early dial-up days before routers were common, if you
wanted 2 PCs to share a net connection, you had to get one connected, then
run an ethernet cable from that PC to the next and set up Internet Sharing
and all kinds of buggering around.