Perform a little research to find two ways to change the MAC address on your com

Question

Perform a little research to find two ways to change the MAC address on your computer. Clearly explain why this is valuable knowledge to have. Also, explain whether this is necessary functionality to have within an operating system including why or why not. Your paper should include an explanation of what a MAC address is and how it is used. Also, make sure to clearly explain the processes for changing your MAC address. Perform a little research to find two ways to change the MAC address on your computer. Clearly explain why this is valuable knowledge to have. Also, explain whether this is necessary functionality to have within an operating system including why or why not. Your paper should include an explanation of what a MAC address is and how it is used. Also, make sure to clearly explain the processes for changing your MAC address.

Explanation / Answer

MAC Address (Media Access Control) is a unique address of our computer. It is the hardware address of our computer.There is a NIC(Network Interface Card) in our system which has a hardware address called MAC address for media access control.MAC address is linked with network adapter and provided when manufactured.MAC address is 6-byte or 12 digit hexadecimal number which is used to uniquely identify a host on a network.MAC address also called a physical address of a computer works on the 'Data link layer' of the OSI model.

Various purposes of using MAC address:

1.Device Identification: It uniquely identifies the system in a network because it provide a system/computer a unique address.

2.Device Tracking: As MAC addresses are unique they can help you in tracking of a device.

3. Assignment of static IP address: Routers are responsible for this,they provide our computer a static IP address by matching it with MAC address to our computer.

4.Authentication using MAC address: Internet service providers authenticate computers through their MAC address and allow only those computers to connect to a network that have a authentic MAC address to connect ot that network.

Ways of changing MAC address:

Two ways which we discuss today for changing MAC address of our network adapter are using 'Device manger' and through 'Registry Editor' .

1.Changing address using Device manager:

First of all access control panel and then open device manager.

In device manager we have a list of all harwares installed in our computer.We have to click on the network adapter in this list.

Then right click on the adapter you are using and select properties,you can see a window of your network adapter's properties.

Then click on the advanced tab and look for the network address entry.Highlight it and then click the radio button to enable the 'Value' field.

Then enter your system's MAC address without any dash or colon.

And finally reboot your system for enabling the changes.

2. Registry editor:

First of all open the command prompt to collect neccessay information of your network adapter.

You have to type a command ipconfig/all and then press enter.After this you have to note the description and physical address for the active network device.

Then again type a command net config rdr and press enter.Then note the GUID enclosed in { } ,next to the physical address.

Then we have to start the Registry editor by opening Run dialog box and typing "regedit" After the registry editor is opened we can change the setting of our network card.

Then go to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEMCurrentControlSet Control Class{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} and then exapnd it.

Then find your adapter from the several folders,open them and match the details of your network card which we note in starting.For ensuring you can ckeck the NetCfgInstanceID field and match it with GUID which we note earlier.

Then right click on the folder device that matches our device.Select New--> String Value and name the new value 'NetworkAddress'.

Double click on the new network address entry and in the Value Data field you can enter the new MAC address.

And finally reboot your computer to enable the changes.

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