this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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Be less of an asshole, it's free. I've been sniffing packets from cable modems since the 90s. I even remember the mac address of my first network card - 00a0cc52cac7, because mediaone gave out persistent hostnames based on your mac address before they were bought by at&t. I once putty'd into my machine from Katmandu just because I could. Incidentally, when I called at&t support to find out if this would continue, their support rep had no idea what I was talking about, and after I mentioned mac addresses, he suggested I call apple.
It's not being an asshole. It's correcting misinformation. There is no tone on the internet so if you read someone as being an asshole it might be a you problem, not a them problem. Sniffing packets doesn't mean you understand networking as evidenced by the fact you think the modem is broadcasting your computer's MAC address.
Just go read up on networking and you'll realize that wouldn't make sense.
That right there is you being an asshole. If that's who you are, that's fine, but at least be honest about it. I know I'm an asshole, so you're not hurting my feelings any by turning it back on me.
If you would like to not be an asshole, a good start would be to accept that you don't know everything, and just because your experience differs from mine doesn't mean I'm wrong. It's fully possible what I observed between 30 and 15 years ago was unusual, or maybe it was common then but isn't now- and if you had led with that, I might have conceded that you may at least have more current knowledge than I. It's also possible I didn't explain myself clearly enough, and we're just misunderstanding each other- a layer 8 problem, if you will.
Well, considering I was seeing arp packets from mac addresses of every other machine on my segment pretty much continuously, what conclusion would you come to?
Telling you to go learn isn't being an asshole no matter how much you think it is. Go bother someone else with your ignorance.