NationStates Jolt Archive

So, at my university residence they are changing internet providers, or something of the like and now they need to record our media access control address before they let us onto the internet. For those of you who are good at computers, what do/would they need this for and will they be able to see if I'm downloading anything from it, or do anything else I wouldn't want them to know. I know this sounds a bit paranoid being all like "my university has nothing better to do with its time than monitor me!!1!" but I just want to know before I let them have the information if they could track me/block me from stuff with it.

i'm not exactly certain what is being discussed. i'm far from being any sort of rocket scientist or guru about this. but it sounds like, well doesn't the chainge of isp chainge everyone's dns. and arn't cookies, the ones, for example, that recognize say, your membership in a forum (or any and all websites that involve 'logging in'), or any and all of them for that matter, somewhat dependent on the dns you access from?

The media access control address, commonly known as MAC address, is the unique identifier of your computer's network card. They need this so that they know exactly which computers are on their network, they do the same thing at our university. Here it's even such that every wall outlet is assigned to exactly one computer. This to prevent random laptops or other computers being plugged in and spreading viruses or doing illegal stuff on the net, etc. It's not related to monitoring what you do on an authorized computer (they don't need your MAC address for that, IP address is sufficient, and they have that anyway).

The media access control address, commonly known as MAC address, is the unique identifier of your computer's network card. They need this so that they know exactly which computers are on their network, they do the same thing at our university. This to prevent random laptops or other computers being plugged in and spreading viruses or doing illegal stuff on the net, etc. It's not really related to monitoring what you do on an authorized computer.

Thank you.

you can tell i've never worked on a lan. sorry for dumb guessing. one of my weaknesses.

you can tell i've never worked on a lan. sorry for dumb guessing. one of my weaknesses.

No, thank you for trying. I appreciate both dumb and smart guessing, and I don't think that trying to reason something out for yourself is a weakness.

you can tell i've never worked on a lan. sorry for dumb guessing. one of my weaknesses.
You weren't all that far off though. MAC addresses are used for logging into a network and are used in place of both DNS or cookies because they are static and cannot be changed (Unless you change out your network card).

BTW, MAC addresses are a fairly good way of securing a network (Well, a basic way), which is probably why your university is asking for it.

we used mac address authentication on our wireless network until we spotted somebody trying to get in. it was more trouble than it was worth to secure it up again so we just went back to wires in the office (which boosted our network speeds from 56mbps to 1gbps, which is a good bonus lol)

we used mac address authentication on our wireless network until we spotted somebody trying to get in. it was more trouble than it was worth to secure it up again so we just went back to wires in the office (which boosted our network speeds from 56mbps to 1gbps, which is a good bonus lol)


I wish I was getting 56mbs:(

You weren't all that far off though. MAC addresses are used for logging into a network and are used in place of both DNS or cookies because they are static and cannot be changed (Unless you change out your network card).

Pishposh. Changing a MAC address is easy and requires no hardware changes at all. For instance in Linux one need only issue a single command to the effect of "ifconfig ethX hw ether [new MAC address]" or use the macchanger-gtk program. And that's not even taking account of the fact that most home routers allow you to specify whichever MAC address you want.

BTW, MAC addresses are a fairly good way of securing a network (Well, a basic way), which is probably why your university is asking for it.

Spoofing a MAC address, as I just mentioned, is a trivial task. It won't stop anyone who actually knows enough to want to compromise a network (or do something so simple as connect another computer/device to it without having to notify some admin busybody) - all it is effective against is people who think that MAC addresses "are static and cannot be changed".

More probable than not, the ISPs of the uni are using the MAC addresses for billing (and hence bandwidth throttling) purposes and for the distribution of dynamic IP addresses within a range.

I wish I was getting 56mbs:(

11n.

You weren't all that far off though. MAC addresses are used for logging into a network and are used in place of both DNS or cookies because they are static and cannot be changed (Unless you change out your network card).

BTW, MAC addresses are a fairly good way of securing a network (Well, a basic way), which is probably why your university is asking for it.

No they're not, easily spoofed. If I wanted, I could passive search out MAC adresses right now, change my own one to that of a wireless network, and be recognised as that computer.

In Linux, anyway. :p

EDIT: redundant thanks to Fass

11n.

That means nothing do me. Do I have to hand in my geek badge?

That means nothing do me. Do I have to hand in my geek badge?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11n