>>> 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
Thanks to you all but I think that Grant has the answer here. I am
looking at my router client list and if I switch off the wi-fi on my
phone, then back on again it reconnects with a different MAC. I
haven't managed to find the hardware MAC yet but even if I did it
would be no use as the router goes by the reported MAC. Thinking
about it, I use airdroid to share between Android and Linux PC and
that app doesn't use MACs, only IP addresses, so maybe I don't have
a problem.