Added custom mac addresses + dhcp renew, longer tcp ack retransmit timeout, improved error handling.

[BlakeGarner]

Added support for:

• begin(byte *mac) {...} lets you specify your own MAC address [begin() is still supported]
• Fix to not send "Content-Type" in GET requests.
• Close connection if data size error, so it can restart gracefully.
• Added maintain() method that should be called periodically to refresh DHCP settings.
• Retransmission Time (ie time to retransmit if receive no TCP ACK) set to 4s, default too short.

[wolfeidau]

Hey what was the reason for the custom mac address?

Is this a common thing to need to override on arduino?

[BlakeGarner]

Hey,
The W5100-based Ethernet shield on Arduino does not have a hardware-allocated MAC address - it must be set in code. The arduino-ninja-blocks library had a single mac hard-coded in - which is fine for prototyping, but problematic for long-term use, particularly if two or more devices were going to be deployed on the same LAN utilising this library.

[wolfeidau]

Ahh just reviewing the examples on the Arduino site.

http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/WebClient

Has a note in the code associated with the mac address.

// Enter a MAC address for your controller below.
// Newer Ethernet shields have a MAC address printed on a sticker on the shield
byte mac[] = { 0xDE, 0xAD, 0xBE, 0xEF, 0xFE, 0xED };

Given this is labeled a library we should certainly enable this to be overridden.