Extend your free WiFi period
Many places where you are provided with free wifi (like airport etc) are restricted to a time limit (like for 30 mins etc) after that you have to purchase some Internet plan from them. Follow the instruction below to avoid this and extend your WiFi period.
If you have a Mac:
Open Terminal and type in:
sudo ifconfig en1 lladdr 00:aa:bb:cc:dd:ee
Hit Enter and type your password. Reconnect to the hotel Wi-Fi and you’ll be seen as a new device, with a brand new free Wi-Fi period. Change the number separated by colons to anything between 00 and ff to create new ‘identities’ on the hotel Wi-Fi system, as often as you like. Voilà!
On Windows (depending on if your network card allows it):
- Open Network and Sharing Center
- Right click ‘Change adapter settings’
- Right click on your Wi-Fi card and click ‘Properties’
- Click ‘Configure’
- Head to ‘Advanced’
- Scroll down to ‘Locally Administered Address’, select ‘Value’ and make up twelve random hexadecimal numbers from 0 to f (e.g. 003d31aa0b1c)
Boom!
How does this work?
On startup, the OS is loading your MAC (media access control) address from the Wi-Fi card (interface ‘en1’ on a Mac or en0 for Ethernet) and stores this in memory (RAM). From there, we can change the value dynamically for as long as the computer is on. Once off, you’ll go back to your old MAC address.
On a Mac/Unix, you can check your MAC address (before and after) in Terminal by typing:
sudo ifconfig en1 |grep ether
Happy hacking ;).