it's the chromebook itself that is blocking the mac address, not the router or the isp.
modern chromebooks don't have rj-45 connections. the concept of wireless is absurdly unsafe, and i won't use wireless anything for anything - every single device in my network, which is actually quite substantive, uses a wired connection. that means i need this little usb to rj-45 connector; i plug the network cable into the connector and the connector into the usb port (or a hub connected to it) and you get network access.
it's slow network access, but that's also intentional. i don't play video games, and i don't even understand what the purpose of trying to connect to the internet at the speeds they're selling is. what website allows you to download at a gb/s? what hardware supports that? maybe i'm a little behind the fastest specs, and maybe i'm underestimating it a little, but i nonetheless think it remains true even now (it was certainly true five years ago) that you're going to have a hard time actually using anything close to that bandwidth. maybe it makes sense to have that much bandwidth if you have a big family using multiple devices simultaneously. ok. but i'm just one person. i don't need more than 10 mb/s to watch youtube at 1020p and that's the highest amount of bandwidth i'm ever going to use. do the fastest sites - like microsoft - let you download much faster than that, anyways? and how much data can your hard drive transfer? it's nothing close to a gb/s.
i just googled this.
the absolutely fastest nvme hard drive on the market in 2026 that will cost you a fortune can transfer at about 110 mbps, if you have the processor speed.
so, why are you paying for 3 gbps internet? i'm not out of date or underestimating anything. you'd need 30 of the fastest devices on the market running simultaneously to tap that. and who is going to let you stream anything at that speed in the first place?
the biggest family running the fastest, newest computers and streaming from the most data-intense websites couldn't possibly need more than 1 gb. so buy 2 to be sure if you're paranoid. the isp is trying to upsell you 3, and it's just nonsense. it's absurd.
i've actually rate limited my 10/100 mbps router at 10 mbps, so nothing's getting through faster than 10 mbps by design, because nothing would get through except a hacker or ad servers that are worse than hackers. for that reason, i've got half the internet blocked by my router.
i digress.
the connector has it's own mac address, which is necessary. the cable is the network card. i remove the wireless cards from any laptops or chromebooks before i plug them in, so the only mac address is on the cable.
i've done this a few times and i've seen how it works.
- if i reboot the chromebook, it picks the usb to rj45 cable up, at first. but, it slowly blocks every port on the hub until none of them work. at the end stages, i can connect the cable and watch it connect for a second and it disconnects. it works again on reboot.
- it looks like the device is dead, but my other chromebooks continue to pick up the device. my windows laptop picks it up. it will work if i reboot.
- i checked my router and there's nothing blocking it from there. but if the router was blocking it, the chromebook would pick it up and it doesn't.
luckily, i have a few of these things. swapping them out becomes annoying because i have to get into the router to change the access rules, which screens connections by mac addresses. new network card means new mac address.
but it's not at all clear to me why the chromebook is sequentially blocking access to the device. i'm blaming this on the hackers because i thought they got into my router, but it's clear they didn't.
is google pushing something down? or are they hacking my chromebook?
script kiddie losers will not succeed in hacking your chromebook, in guest mode, even if it's a few years old. if it's not google, it's just more evidence that this is somebody with substantive resources and serious intent. and i don't understand what the fuck they want.
let's see if the same thing happens with the new mac address or not.