IPs are constantly changing for home users. If you reboot your modem, you are likely to have yet another different IP address. As a result, most places don't block on IP alone, as it blocks the wrong person, a few days later.
IPs are constantly changing for home users. If you reboot your modem, you are likely to have yet another different IP address.
Not necessarily. Theoretically, they could, since they are dynamically assigned - but in practice, not so much. Cable companies won't guarantee you a fixed IP address without paying for it (since they don't want home users running web sites to bog down their network), but it's easier to troubleshoot everything if the IP addresses have long lease times.
As a result, most places don't block on IP alone, as it blocks the wrong person, a few days later.
Again, based on your earlier recommendation, you seem to be implying that these sites are blocking based on the MAC address of your PC. How, pray tell, are they able to obtain said MAC address? By the time they get that packet, the original MAC address will be long gone, replaced by the MAC address of the next to last hop in the route. Only the original IP address (usually of the router) for directing the replies gets propagated.
Meanwhile, my understanding is that most places block
based on a combination of IP address and cookies.