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Re: [LUG] MAC address on Android

 


>>> Hi George,
>>>
>>> To the best of my knowledge the MAC address is the physical device address and doesn't /ordinarily/ change.  The one time I /have/ seen it change was when Microsoft made a complete feline's rear-end of an update which meant every time a Windows 7 Phone was shut off it changed MAC address on reboot.  Given that example it is theoretically possible, but I've never seen it on Android.  A friend of mine visits regularly so I have his tablet and phone in my allowed MAC addresses for WiFi and never had to change them. Ditto for my brother with his Apple based kit (iPhone, laptop and kids' iPad).
>>>
>>> Kind regards,
>>>
>>> Julian
>>>
>> Have you searched into the android device for the MAC address? It's very likely to be hardwired - you normally pay a lot extra to be able to change it - look in setting/wifi or something...
>> Tom te tom te tom
>>
> That's what I thought too Tom until my Windows Phone 7 episode.. somehow Microsoft managed to stuff it up.. no idea how they managed what I thought was impossible..
>
> Julian

In theory the MAC address should be fixed by the  network chip and unchangeable, however, as with many things in computing these days, much of the data handling performed by the chip is actually handed off to the processor and operating system. As such it is usually relatively trivial to change the MAC address that's in use - obviously the address on the chip hasn't actually changed, but then the chip isn't really doing very much anyway.

My laptop (HP G6092ea) gets a new Ethernet MAC address every time it reboots because the nVidia enforce chip reports the actual MAC address incorrectly so the 'driver' doesn't know what to do with it and therefore creates a new MAC address. It is very frustrating.

Since this is on a Debian Linux system, I would imagine that Android c/would do the same if facing the same problem.

Grant

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