Re: Help please: Hardware Overview of a PC

["Craig A. Finseth" <fin@finseth.com>]

   Uhhh... the MAC address shouldn't ever change. It isn't reliant on a
   connection at all, it's a unique hardware identifier. A device's MAC only
   changes if it's changed by some spoofing software, or in the rare case of
   a BIOS configurable onboard. What you all are describing sounds more like
   the IP address, which is totally, radically different.

MAC addresses are per-interface.  It will change if the interface in
use is changing from copper to WiMax to 802.11.

Also, MAC addresses are reconfigurable in software.  Granted, the
software supplied by Apple doesn't make it easy, but a trivial program
can be downloaded to make the change.

The only property of MAC addresses that's important is that it be
unique within a given layer 2 network.  The way that it's implemented
is designed to make it easy to achieve this uniqueness and nothing more.

Craig

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