Originally Posted by CraigN
ranj he cannot ping anything if he is not being given an ip address.
in our area cable modems are locked to MAC address
He WILL be able to ping 127.0.0.1 with or without an IP address, as this is simply sending a request to the NIC itself, and not going outside the pc.
BTW, cable modems round here are not locked to MAC at all, they used to be eons ago, but now its a free for all!
I do find it wont automatically lease another DHCP address though, and I do have to restart the modem.