Change WiFi MAC Address [closed]

Question

I'm one of the developers working on the Serval Project and we're looking at using the Huawei Ideos U1850 as the default platform for our Android development activities.

We've purchased a few phones from one of our local resellers here in Australia.

We have noticed that a number of the devices that we've sourced from this supplier all have the same WiFi MAC address.

Specifically the MAC address that we're seeing is as follows:

00:90:4C:14:43:19

Multiple devices with the same MAC address is causing us some issues with our development work and so we have two questions:

1. Is this a common issue with the Ideos U1850 phones?
2. Is there any way to change the MAC address on the phone to something else?

Answer 1

The idea of a MAC address is that they are intended to be globally unique identifications. I am not sure how you are seeing the same MAC address across multiple devices, this should never happen. I know it perhaps does not answer your question but it should never happen in the first place.

None the less, you can try MAC address spoofing, and a quick Google search reveals the following link: http://www.robmcghee.com/android/changing-the-mac-address-on-android/

Answer 2

At first you need to be root on your mobile, and open a terminal

~: netcfg -->show yours net devices

Now you can see what device you want to change, then you can do the next steps where eth0 would be replace with your net device name (wlan0 is common).

~: ifconfig eth0 down
~: ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:80:48:BA:d1:30 --> your new mac
~: ifconfig eth0 up

I think this solution is ok, but now I can't try it. If a solution is possible may be will seem to this.

Answer 3

While I was searching for a more permanent way to change my wifi mac address, I discovered there is a util for Texas Instrument wifi chips. It is called "calibrator". The wifi mac address can set in the nvs file. Here is what I did.

root@android:/system/etc/firmware/ti-connectivity # calibrator set nvs_mac wl1271-nvs.bin xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

more info: https://github.com/gxk/ti-utils

I have the HTC Amaze and rooted. You might also need to mount /system with RW. I can't speak for broadcom chips however.