[thelist] FW: MAC Addresses/Physical Address!

jon hall jonhall at ozline.net
Wed Oct 2 19:24:01 CDT 2002


All NIC's have a MAC address...even emulated NIC's in USB modems. Why
would you want the DSL modems MAC? You have no control over that...the
modem could go bad and could be replaced, making the software not
work. In the case of a USB modem the MAC address is usually generated
by the dsl/cable modem. Either way, Windows has to have a MAC of some
sort. Ethernet requires it. How unique a generated MAC would be is
unknown though, plus since their really isn't a standard in wide use
for DSL like DOCSIS for the cable modems, getting the DSL's MAC
without knowing the brand would probably be difficult.

If you want a UUID for a system, don't rely on the MAC address alone.
Microsoft has done this already...although they have kept their method
a secret, they use a combination of different pieces of data to come
up with their magic number. The Win32 API has a generateUUID type
function built in. I'm not sure what it's called, but it's supposedly
unique.

If they are all connected to the internet already, why not generate
the UUID on the server, send it to the client, and write it encrypted
to some remote corner of the HD or the registry?

--
 jon
 mailto:jonhall at ozline.net

Wednesday, October 2, 2002, 5:33:53 PM, you wrote:
MA> I'm trying to obtain programmatically the MAC Addresses/Physical Address for
MA> ADSL modems! I have tried using the code I have for mac addresses on
MA> ethernet cards (from Microsoft's msdn) but it looks like ADSL modems don't
MA> have a mac address...

MA> I have a client that wants to be able to uniquely identify a whole series of
MA> pc's they have which are spread around the country and connected to the
MA> internet and check a unique unalterable id against a central database so
MA> they can load appropriate updates etc. Basically it's to be part of a
MA> licensing system!

MA> Can anyone point me in the right direction (need to do it in VB6)

MA> Thanks




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