"His MAC address, which is meant to be specific to a machine" The article (which I tend to agree with) tends to argue that a MAC address is exactly NOT that, e

"His MAC address, which is meant to be specific to a machine" The article (which I tend to agree with) tends to argue that a MAC address is exactly NOT that, especially in a technical sense (thus a technical user may indeed have more reason for the intent not to be "clear"). I think a better description in plain english is : A MAC address is an address that a particular interface on a particular machine asks to be identified by in a particular session. I.E. it's not an identity of a machine, its an identity of an interface. Its not an identity assigned by the network, its an identity offered by the machine/interface itself. Its not guaranteed to be unique, or stable beyond a session. If it was meant to be a specific identifier for a machine, we would have many technical problems on the "legitimate" side of things, think multiple network cards and virtualised machines. There was no agreement between Arron and MIT that arron would use a particular MAC address as an indentifier on their network. Its a downside of running an open network.