Every NIC (Network Interface Carte) has a unique MAC address (Media Access Control). This applies to all types of network cards, including Ethernet cards and WiFi cards. The MAC Address is a half-dozen-byte number or 12-digit hexadecimal number that is used to uniquely identify a host on a network.

An instance of a MAC address is 1F-2E-3D-4C-5B-6A and it falls into the Layer 2 networking protocol of the OSI model. In today'due south networks, ARP, or Address Resolution Protocol converts a MAC address to a Layer 3 protocol address, such equally an IP address. A MAC address can also be called a Physical Address. Read my postal service on how to find your MAC address if you don't know information technology.

mac address

All MAC addresses are difficult-coded into a network bill of fare and can never exist changed. Nevertheless, you can modify or spoof the MAC accost in the operating system itself using a few unproblematic tricks.

And so why would you want to change your MAC address? Well there are many reasons for this, mostly related to bypassing some kind of MAC address filter attack a modem, router or firewall. Changing the MAC Address can aid you featherbed sure network restrictions past emulating an unrestricted MAC Address or by spoofing a MAC address that is already authorized.

For example, a WiFi network may allow only authorized computers to connect to the network and filters out computers based on the MAC address. If you lot tin sniff out a legitimate MAC address, you lot can and so spoof your MAC address and gain access to the WiFi network.

Another case is if you take an ISP that allows only a certain number of computers to connect to the Cyberspace from your home. If you have more computers that need to connect, yous can spoof the MAC address of an authorized computer and connect from a different computer.

Alter Windows MAC Address

Y'all tin change the MAC address for the network carte du jour in Windows pretty easily following the steps below.

Step 1: Click on Start, and so Command Panel, and so Network Connections, and right-click on the network connection you want to change the MAC address for and select Properties. It volition commonly either exist Local Area Connexion or Wireless Network Connectedness.

local area connection

If yous are using Windows Vista, Windows 7 or higher, you have to go to Control Panel, so Network and Internet, then Network and Sharing Centre, and so click onManage Network Connections or Alter adapter settings.

change adpater settings

So you tin can right-click on the adapter and cull Properties.

Step 2: On the Full general or Networking tab, click the Configure button.

configure network adapter

Step three: Now click on the Advanced tab and click on the Locally Administered Address property or the Network Address property.

locally administered address

Past default, the Not Nowadays value is selected. Go ahead and click on the Value radio button and enter in a new MAC address. The MAC address is a combination of 6 pairs of numbers and characters, i.e. xl-A2-D9-82-9F-F2. You lot should enter the MAC address without the dashes.

mac address change

Yous tin get to the control prompt and type in IPCONFIG /ALL to bank check that the MAC accost has been changed. Go ahead and restart the estimator in order for the changes to take effect.

This is the simplest way to change your MAC address in Windows. You can too exercise so via the registry, but it'south much more technical and probably non required by most people.

Change OS X MAC Address

Changing the MAC accost on Bone Ten is definitely not every bit like shooting fish in a barrel every bit it is on Windows. Firstly, you have to use Last (similar to command prompt in Windows) to actually alter the MAC accost.

Secondly, you need to manually figure out the technical name of the adapter before you can modify the settings. I'll explain everything below step by pace, simply it gets a chip complicated at times.

To start, let'due south find out the electric current MAC accost for your Mac. You can practise this in one of 2 ways: via System Preferences or via Terminal. Open System Preferences, click on Network and so click on theAdvanced push button. Brand certain to select the advisable interface start (WiFi, Ethernet, etc) in the listbox on the left.

os x network advanced

Click on the Hardware tab and y'all will see the kickoff line is MAC Accost. I thought you could simply choose Manually from the Configure dropdown, only that doesn't permit you to edit the MAC address.

network hardware mac

In Concluding, y'all tin can become the MAC address past typing in the following command:

ifconfig en0 | grep ether

This will give yous the MAC accost for the en0 interface. Depending on how many interfaces you have on your estimator, y'all might need to run this command several times adding 1 to the number each time. For example, I ran the following commands beneath until I reached an interface that didn't exist.

terminal os x ifconfig

At present you can only compare the MAC addresses listed here with the 1 you saw via System Preferences. In my case, my WiFi MAC address of f8:1e:df:d8:9d:8a matches with en1, and so that is the interface I take to employ for the adjacent commands.

Before we change the MAC accost, you lot tin use a useful command in Terminal to generate a random MAC address if you need one.

openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 'due south/\(..\)/\1:/g; south/.$//'

At present that you lot have a new MAC address, you can change the current one using the post-obit command below. Replace Xx with the actual MAC address yous want to use.

sudo ifconfig en0 ether twenty:20:20:xx:20:twenty

In gild to do this, yous need to be logged in equally an Administrator or you have to enable the root account in Os X. Past default, root is disabled and information technology's better to get out it disabled if y'all can. Just login as an admin and you should be able to run the command just fine. Information technology will ask you for your countersign, though, before irresolute the MAC address.

Also, the accost won't change if you are notwithstanding continued to a WiFi network. You need to commencement disconnect from any networks and then run the command. Surprisingly, disconnecting from a wireless network in Bone X is not intuitive at all. You lot accept to press and concur the Option key then click on the WiFi icon to see the disconnect option.

disconnect from wifi os x

So here is a rundown of all the commands I ran in order to get the current MAC address, generate a random one, update the MAC address and and so verify to make sure it had actually changed.

mac address change os x

Every bit I mentioned earlier, this is definitely not as straightforward equally the process is on Windows, but you should be able to do it if you merely copy and paste the commands above. If y'all accept whatever questions, experience free to post a comment. Relish!