I use Comcast for my Internet connection.. How do I get a new IP?

It seems that the ‘battle’ between media industry watchdogs MPAA and RIAA and P2P rages on, but recently a new threat to end users of BitTorrent has reared its ugly head: network-level filtering.

According to this NYT article, it is real and being considered industry-wide by the telcos, and specific ISPs (possibly Comcast) have already begun implementing this (possibly explaining your situation). Hardware-based filters are now being implemented at the network level to filter ‘good’ and ‘bad’ BitTorrent traffic. Civil Liberties unions are up in arms about this, but it may be too early to tell what is going to happen (read: it’s likely to get uglier).

While the conventional response to changing an IP address would be to “release and renew” your IP address via your gateway/router’s admin software, or by contacting your ISP to ask them to reset the IP (given you have a dynamic host address aka DHCP),
I’m not sure this is a viable solution for you if Comcast is in fact one of those ‘key ISPs’ now filtering your encrypted BitTorrent traffic.

A quick google using the keywords “ISPs cracking down on Bit Torrent” will yield some interesting info for you…here’s one (though quite old-still relevant) from a BiTorrent user’s blog.

So suffice it to say, changing the IP may not be an effective solution, but there are definitely some nuggets of info to consider…it may be time to go shopping for a new ISP?...

You can try turning off the modem for a while (hours? a day?) and then turning it back on. Comcast may assign you a new ip address. Or you can call Comcast and ask them directly.

As they’ve said, it really depends on how long the DHCP lease is on your modem…hopefully it’s only 24 hours but it could be 1 week.

Your cable model is assigned an external IP that is static. This address can’t be change easily, and if you tried to change it you probably would cause a loss of service. If your bandwidth is being limited you might want to switch to a new provider.
To achieve better transfer rates try is using a higher UPD and TCP listening ports in your torrent client. Also, enable RC4 encryption. Doing this makes it harder for Comcast to block or throttle our torrent traffic.
When you are saying your IP is banned, did the private tracker do this or was it Comcast?