"Hide MAC Address"

Mac Attack
Hi.

If you're running a version of Windows, go to a DOS command (Start | Run | cmd or command) and at the DOS Prompt, type ipconfig, or ipconfig/all. Older WIN versions use winipcfg.

The resulting list will include your hardware - MAC - address, in a form like 30-3b-43-5d ... etc., along with your IP Address and Gateway information. A Hex address. This is the MAC address.

On my wireless LAN I had to bind the my laptop's wireless PC Card to the access point, using the MAC address, to ensure only my wireless LAN would not accept any other device.

I hope this helps.

-a.

... corrected version ...

The MAC Address is normally only visable on the local netwrok segment. It isn't info that routers normally pass so if you ping an address on the other side of a router you won't see the MAC address.

Depending on your NIC you may be able to use a software configuration utility to change it's assigned MAC address. On older cards it's burned into an EPROM so it is considerably harder to change it.

But you have to have a MAC address of some sort to access the network in any sort of "normal" fashion. The MAC address is what the router uses to talk to your machine. Without one, the router has no way of directing traffic to you.

Hi fishin'

Could you give me some info to change my NIC's MAC address. It is D-Link DFE 538TX.

Thank you.

You'd have to look at the utilities supplied with the NIC or on D-Link's WWW site to see if it possible to change yours via software.

NIC MAC PaddyWhack
And here I thought that a MAC address could not be altered (except maybe by bad people spoofin' ...). It is supposed to be like a fingerprint - unique to each piece of equipment.

Learn something every day ...

-a.

Because of the structure and size limitaions of the MAC Address space device makers started reusing addresses in their production process. On occassion people (usually in large IT shops) ran into problems where they'd have 3 or 4 NICs that ended up with the same MAC Address and that created some problems on their LANs. In one of my previous jobs we'd order 1,000 NICs at a time and every now and then we'd get dupes.

The manufacturers started using Flash ROMs instead of EEPROMs and provided setup utilities so that the addresses could be changed if those types of problems were encountered.