Shaun McCance
shaunm@gnome.org
Jim Campbell
jwcampbell@gmail.com
Michael Hill
mdhillca@gmail.com
Ekaterina Gerasimova
kittykat3756@gmail.com
The unique identifier assigned to network hardware.
Daniel Nylander
po@danielnylander.se 2012

# Vad är en MAC-adress?

A MAC address is the unique identifier that is assigned by the manufacturer to a piece of network hardware (like a wireless card or an ethernet card). MAC stands for Media Access Control, and each identifier is intended to be unique to a particular device.

A MAC address consists of six sets of two characters, each separated by a colon. `00:1B:44:11:3A:B7` is an example of a MAC address.

To identify the MAC address of your own network hardware:

Open the Activities overview and start typing Network.

Click on Network to open the panel.

Select Wi-Fi or Wired from the list on the left, depending on which device you want to check.

Your MAC address will be displayed as the Hardware Address on the right for a wired connection, or open the connection details by pressing on the details button to see the Details for wireless network.

In practice, you may need to modify or "spoof" a MAC address. For example, some internet service providers may require that a specific MAC address be used to access their service. If the network card stops working, and you need to swap a new card in, the service won't work anymore. In such cases, you would need to spoof the MAC address.