2 Phones, 1 MAC Address

[dBasement]

I did an internet search and came here. One of the closed posts deals with 2 devices sharing the same MAC address. I have the same problem, however it is both my wife's and my smartphones that share the same MAC address. As you can imagine, this has caused intermittent wifi issues since we bought the phones (at exactly the same time) in 2011. I have been in touch with the manufacturer (Samsung) and discussions are on-going. What concrens me is that there may be more phones like ours that share the same MAC address. The number looks like something that would be a test address or something like that.

 

[popatim]

You sure its the mac address you are looking at?

MAC addresses are longer than IP addresses and consist of six hexidecimal pairs, like 01-cd-0f-4a-2b-c3

IP addresses are four number groups (0 to 255) seperated by decimals, such as 192.168.1.101

 

[dBasement]

Yes, I'm 100% certain. Apparently Samsung is just as perplexed about this. I've since spent several hours with their tech support and apparently this is a particularly unusual problem.

 

[Alabalcho]

The MAC address of your phone should be printed on the phone itself. Does it match the one your router is seeing? You can see your MAC address in "About device" tab in "Settings" as well.

 

[dBasement]

Yes, the MAC address shows as the same, plus the ip that the 2 phones get directed to on my home router is the same. What that means is that only one phone can access the internet through the router at any given time.

 

[Alabalcho]

I would rather say that you got a phone with Samsung label on it, or black-market phone.
Take the battery off, and check the MAC addresses printed there. ALso - check MAC address lookup service like this one[/usr] to confirm that this MAC address actually belongs to Samsung.

 

[dBasement]

Samsung has acknowledged that my wife and I share the same MAC address. I am certain that we aren't the only ones that share that MAC Address (hence the reason we can't connect to hotspots) and Samsung admits this is a serious issue, but they won't do anything about it because the phones were purchased in 2011. At least we know that is the problem and it is not something that Shaw has any control over.
There are workarounds, but I really don't want to spend any more time working it out (4 hours with Samsung TS is enough to make me want to throw the phone and myself off the ferry). The easiest workaround is to use my laptop with Wifi hotspots.

If you are using a Samsung Galaxy S2 T989D and can't connect to public wifi like ShawOpen, check your MAC Address (In wifi/advanced). If it comes up as a generic-looking MAC address (mine starts out 00:12:34 etc), you probably got the same manufacturers run as my wife and I. I did the search of that address and came up with Camille Bauer in Switzerland as the vendor. I have sent an e-mail to them.

The phones were purchased through a reputable cell-phone provider (Telus) in a generic Telus store in downtown Vancouver.

 

[dBasement]

This never got resolved and I am hoping that someone has some advice. This is a polite bump.