IP Change

I have always been annoyed by certain file sharing services who make the users wait for some time before initiating another download… Best examples are Rapidshare and Megaupload… Megaupload used to be free from all this waiting, but now it too joined the club…

What they do is that they make us wait for a time period proportional to the size of the file that was downloaded just before…

Now, lets talk about my connection. My internet connection is an “always on” connection… ie,, no dialups, no username or password… It uses a cable modem and all that I have to do to connect to the internet is simply connect the cable modem to my Ethernet card…

The file sharing sites or any other site identify you by your IP address that your ISP assigns to you at the time of accepting your “connect to internet request”… Thats why they say that the download limit for you at IP address ###.###.###.### has been exceeded and so you have to wait for ### minutes or else go for the premium membership or something like that… A solution to the waiting problem mentioned above is to somehow change the IP assigned by your ISP… I have searched everywhere I could but couldn’t find any method which works… ADSL users will laugh at me if they read this because all they have to do is to disconnect and reconnect to change the IP… Finally after a long time, my improvisation worked… Here the ISP server is made to re-assign me with a new IP address…

First of all, all “always on” connections set the IP in this way. Everyday, you are assigned an IP that stays valid for a period of time, usually 24 hrs in that time if you switch off your cable modem or pc and when you switch it back on, the pc will have the same IP as before… Here is a way by which your external IP gets changed:

1) Open Command Prompt as Administrator(I don’t mean that you should login to safe mode and to administrator account; In Vista you can right-click on an application and select “run as Administrator”… As for XP you will find only a “Run as” in the right-click menu; So, use that…)

2) Type : ipconfig/release

3) Switch off modem(turn off the power)

4) Type : ipconfig/flushdns

5) Type : ipconfig/registerdns

6) Type : ipconfig/flushdns

7) Switch on modem

8) Wait till modem initializes

9) Type : ipconfig/renew connectionname

Now you will have a new external IP address for your pc… I am no sure how this works… Right now, I think its because you end up clearing your dns infomation and then requesting the server to provide you an IP… Then the server treats it as a fresh request and provides an IP which is the new one…