3

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?
CoreyWallis
  • 33
  • 1
  • 1
  • 4

3 Answers3

4

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/

garyj
  • 1,302
  • 2
  • 13
  • 22
  • 1
    Hi, completely agree that it shouldn't happen but we have a few phones now all with the same MAC address. This suggests it is being set somewhere in the image on the phone. The question is where? Thanks for the link I'll check it out. – CoreyWallis Mar 13 '11 at 12:12
  • It just makes no sense that a manufacturer would set the same MAC addresses across a number of devices. When you say you are seeing 00:90:4C:14:43:19 where exactly are you seeing this? – garyj Mar 14 '11 at 01:22
  • Hi, one of my colleagues has been leading the work on this. We use [batman](https://github.com/servalproject/batman) to provide mesh based networking and it starts the WiFi interface independently of the Android GUI. To start the interface it uses data in an NVRAM.txt file. What we've found is that the NVRAM.txt file on these devices specifies the same MAC address. The 'true' MAC address appears to be stored else where. Now that we know this we can deal with it and generate our own MAC address before starting batman on these devices. Thanks for your help @garyj – CoreyWallis Mar 16 '11 at 01:42
  • Before anyone else dives into that rabbit hole: know that your device's bootloader needs to be unlocked to be able to perform that method. Took me an entire evening to figure that out. O_O – Protector one Nov 16 '15 at 22:16
0

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.

xeejem
  • 106
  • 2
  • 10
0

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.

Amanuel Nega
  • 1,899
  • 1
  • 24
  • 42
Ganger85
  • 11
  • 1