Your network interface card (NIC) has a unique MAC address (media access control address) which identifies this networking device over a network. Some network administrators restrict network bandwidth, network access times etc. based on the MAC address of your NIC card. But you can bypass these restrictions easily by changing the MAC address. Although there is way to change it manually by editing the Windows registry, but this method is error prone and time consuming. Instead, you can use the free tool Mac Makeup to change the MAC address of your NIC cards. Here is how :
- Download Mac Makeup from the Gorlani Software site. The download comes in a ZIP archive. You can un-zip and extract the contents to a folder using a free tool like http://www.jZip.com/. Then run MacMakeUp.exe by right-clicking on it and choosing Run as administrator.
- In the Mac Makeup window, make sure you have checked the checkboxes Filter virtual interfaces and Auto NIC off/on. Most people have only one network adaptor, but if you have more then one, then choose one NIC card (Network Adaptor) from the drop down list on the top. Generate a random MAC address by clicking on the Generate random button. And finally click on the Change button.
- If your network adaptor does not support power-cycling (turning off and on automatically), then you would have to click on the Cycle interface now button to manually cycle it.
- If later you decide to remove this manually set random MAC address and go back to the original MAC address of your network adaptor, then select our NIC card from the drop-down list and click on the Remove button.
Mac Makeup is a free, standalone, portable tool that lets you change the MAC address of your network adaptors quickly and easily. You can use it to spoof the MAC address and bypass any possible MAC related restrictions whenever you want to.
You can download Mac Makeup from http://www.gorlani.com/.