
THE HANDY DANDY ANALOGX ANONYMAC
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, I imagine if you have downloaded this, then you already have a pretty
good idea of what it is for, and what you plan to use it for.  For those of
you who don't know, then you're probably unlikely to need it.  ;)  What the
program does is allow you to change the MAC address of your network card.
What is your MAC address?  The easiest way to think about it is that it is
your networking hardware's serial number - now these really should be unique,
but thanks to global markets and manufacturers that don't really follow the
rules too closely, they aren't (but it's pretty unlikely that you're going
to just happen to have two devices that do collide).

To change your MAC, simply enter in the new one you'd like to use in the MAC
address edit control, and press apply - it will then be set to whichever
network connection you currently have selected.  The change does NOT take
effect immediately, it requires you to either restart the network connection
(open up the Network Connections, select the connection, choose 'disable',
let it disable, then once that's done select it again and choose 'enable').
This should work in most cases, but if it doesn't then rebooting will pretty
much always work - unless for some reason your network card doesn't support
changing the NIC, but this is not very common.

The actual MAC address can be entered just about any way you like, for
example, let's say you have the MAC 1,2,3,4,5,6 - this could be written
any one of the following ways:
                                010203040506
                                01:02:03:04:05:06
                                01-02-03-04-05-06
or even:
                                1.2.3.4.5.6

The last one with the periods is a bit special, since it's not actually in
hex, it's in decimal (a bit like an IP address) - if you need that format,
you're in luck, if you don't, then it doesn't matter.

If you would like to remove the modified MAC address, simply erase the MAC
address from the edit box, and then press 'Apply' - you will be notified that
the software MAC address was removed and the connection will return to its
default once it has restarted.  Alternatively you can just hit the big
'Restore original MAC' button, whichever way you prefer.  :)

The ARP viewer gives you the ability to view the Windows ARP table, where it
stores information about other computers it has connected to.  In general this
is only every going to have computers on your local network, although is some
rare instances others might appear.  You can right-click on a MAC and copy it
to the clipboard for easy reference later on as well.

The manufacturer list is actually provided by the IEEE, and is stored in a
file (in the same directory as the executable) call 'oui.txt'.  The one that
is provided in the installer has all the manufacturers, but I've stripped
out much of the unused information.  The actually loader is fully compatible
with the format provided at the IEEE website (using the download link, just
save it over the old one):

         http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/index.shtml

So you can always go here and download the latest to keep it up to date.

So how does your MAC address actually get changed?  Well, the functionality
is built into Windows and most network drivers - and you could go in and
change it yourself in the registry if you were so inclined.  That being said,
it's much easier to use a tool like this to do it, plus it gives you the
ability to check out other things such as the true hardware MAC address, etc.

As always, more programs, music, and all sorts of other things can be found
at:

http://www.analogx.com/

