Hi guys, this may have been asked 1000 times but I can’t find it so I apologise in advance.
My question is why do we have to give out our MAC address? I have very limited networking knowledge but I was under the impression that MAC address was only used internally? And changed once it’s been on a hop?
Can someone explain just to ease my worries about giving it out. Thank you
There are two predominant methods to connect. to most servers. The first would be via M3U URL which passes a user name and password to via the URL for authentication when it reaches the server you are connecting to.
The second is via MAC Address where you enter in a Portal. When your devices connects to the portal it checks to see if your MAC Address is registered on the server for authentication. As danny121pt mentioned only specific devices use the MAC Address method.
You didn't actually say what device you have/use to connect with, so just to give a bare bones answer to the 'changed once it’s been on a hop' question JIC that's what you were asking (so the 'Network MAC' one u/danny121pt mentioned)...
MAC addresses are hard-coded into a network card and can't be changed. For example, your Smart TV has a network card in it, so if it can use both LAN and Wi-Fi, you'll have 2 MAC addresses - 1 for LAN, 1 for Wi-Fi, and these will never change. As mentioned in the other posts, if you have a MAG box, it to has a MAC address, and the reason you give that, is that what a provider uses to tie your service to you (your device) .
If you were asking about/referring to an STB Emulator MAC, then yes - that MAC can change, but only by you (you don't want to change it once you give it to your provider mind you), but it boils down to the same thing - that's what you give to a provider to tie your service to you.
Like i said, just a bare bones answer. Others may have better detail than I can provide ;-)
It's how the providers identify the player accessing your account.
Technically, every mac address in the world is unique. it's so you cant just give your password out to your friend.
You can clone Mac addresses too.
Yes only for mag, formulet, buzz, like mentioned before in detail by Danny
The MAC address is the physical address of a network device, and is (or should be) unique. An IP would be fairly useless in this case as you more than likely have a router at home, which would assign an internal IP to the device. The IP your provider would see will be the external IP assigned by your ISP, which will change regularly when the lease expires unless you have specifically requested a static IP.
Now, onto stalker based devices. Usually these will use what is called a virtual MAC. This is an address generated that is unique to the device which you provide to your provider so they know where to send your data (I.e. channels, EPG etc). As others have mentioned previously some devices have more than one network card, so they'll have more than one physical MAC, which is why a virtual MAC is used.
Some apps allow you to change the virtual MAC, such as STB Emu. You can configure multiple devices to use this same MAC and then they should all be able to receive your IPTV data, however you will only be able to use one device at a time with this method, as far as I'm aware.
If you are using an android box, your phone, PC, firestick or Smart TV then it is not needed.
It is needed for MAG boxes because playing TV is their sole purpose, and so the mac address is the player's card to the IPTV service. But you see other devices serve multiple purposes and thus these will use username/password and connect to servers via m3u or epg streams.
MAC address - Only for Mag Boxes, Emulators like Stb Emu Pro, Dedicated apps like Buzz TV 2, MOL/MOL2 (Formuler), Tvip and stalker based boxes.
Not to be confused with Network Mac on devices (well bar Mags normally same network mac as mac) but other than that no.