Networking: Cabled and Wireless Wi-Fi Networks

NIC MAC Address

Permanently stored within every network interface card (NIC) or wireless network adapter is a unique 48-bit binary number called the MAC (Media Access Control) Address. And it is by this MAC address that each NIC or adapter card is identified within a local area network (LAN). Indeed, it was because each NIC’s MAC address uniquely identifies it in the log files of Internet servers that the writer of the infamous “I love you” virus was traced and brought to justice. The network chip in any kind of mobile phone (2G, 3G, 4G) also has a MAC Address.

I have never had to use the MAC Address to set up a wireless network manually, but it might be necessary to do so in some obscure problematic cases.

In Windows XP, enter cmd in the Start => Run box and then enter ipconfig /all at the command prompt.

In Windows Vista7/10, enter cmd in the Start => Search… box to bring up the Command Prompt and then enter ipconfig /all in it. The MAC address is listed as its Physical Address. It looks like this: 8C-DD-60-0S-BC-EE.

MAC Address – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

Wikipedia: “According to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency has a system that tracks the movements of everyone in a city by monitoring the MAC addresses of their electronic devices. As a result of users being trackable by their devices’ MAC addresses, Apple Inc. has started using random MAC addresses in their iOS line of devices while scanning for networks. If random MAC addresses are not used, researchers have confirmed that it is possible to link a real identity to a particular wireless MAC address.”

Can You Track Phones When They are Turned Off? Apparently, NSA Can! –

http://techpp.com/2013/08/22/track-phone-turned-off/

Networking two or more home computers is nowhere nearly as difficult as it used to be before the advent of Windows 95 in 1995 – even if it is a wireless network. In fact, it is now a relatively simple procedure to set up a peer-to-peer (wired or wireless) home network. Wireless is the easiest to set up because no wiring is involved.

Wikipedia: “A peer-to-peer (P2P) network in which interconnected nodes (“peers”) share resources among each other without the use of a centralized administrative system.”

The alternative is to create a server-based network that uses one computer as the server, the resources of which are used to serve client computers. The client computers do not have to have any software other than the client network operating system installed on them. They take everything they need to use from the server over the network. But you do not need a server-based network to play network games, or use Microsoft’s Internet Connection Sharing. This is just as well, because server and client networking requires the use of the expensive Professional or higher versions of Windows 7/8.1/10 or a version of Windows Server or Windows Home Server or the very much cheaper open-source version of a Linux distribution and other server-client operating systems.

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