Unfortunately I get byte address ni.getHardwareAddress(); as null.

So, is it mandatory that I should use the WifiInfo instance to get MAC address of android hardware.

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In Computer Network various types of address are introduced; each works at different layer.

Media Access Control Address is a physical address which works at Data Link Layer.

In this article, we will discuss about addressing in DLL, which is MAC Address.

MAC Address is also known as Physical Address of a network device.

MAC Address is word wide unique, since millions of network devices exists and we need to uniquely identify each.

First 6-digits (say 00:40:96) of MAC Address identifies the manufacturer, called as OUI ( Organizational Unique Identifier ).

IEEE Registration Authority Committee assign these MAC prefixes to its registered vendors.

MAC address can be represented using any of the following formats Note: Colon-Hexadecimal notation is used by Linux OS and Period-separated Hexadecimal notation is used by Cisco Systems.

If the LSB (least significant bit) of first octet of an address is set to zero, the frame is meant to reach only one receiving NIC.

In Layer-2 (Ethernet) Multicast address, LSB (least significant bit) of first octet of an address is set to one.

IEEE has allocated the address block 01-80-C2-xx-xx-xx (01-80-C2-00-00-00 to 01-80-C2-FF-FF-FF) for group addresses for use by standard protocols.

Ethernet frames with ones in all bits of the destination address (FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF) are referred as broadcast address.

Frames which are destined with MAC address FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF will reach to every computer belong to that LAN segment.

When device connects to the ISP, DHCP server records the MAC address and then assign IP address.

If user wants to reconnect, DHCP server checks if the device is connected before.

If so, then server tries to assign same IP address (in case lease period not expired).

Or the other option is Cloning, user can simply clone the registered MAC address with ISP.

Now router keeps reporting old MAC address to ISP and there will be no connection issue.

Please write comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more information about the topic discussed above.

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The Reason We Can'T Use The Mac Address As The Only Address For The Whole Internet Is ____________