Anybody know if the MAC address in buttons of the same type is the same?
I know it'd be terrible network practice and terrible standards-wise and just generally terrible, just figured I'd double-check before buying a crate of Tide buttons and discovering they all report the same MAC
I'm not sure, but I doubt it. You could order two or three and check for yourself.
According to a stack exchange discussion [1] duplicate MAC addresses could result from spoofing, a mistake during manufacturing, or willful negligence on the part of the manufacturer. I'd expect Amazon to follow the standards.
There's almost no way Amazon would be stupid enough to be shipping out tons of devices with the same MAC. Easy enough to order a couple and check though.
I don't know for certain but they should be all different. Amazon's goal is for consumers to have many of these things in their home, and they should all interoperate nicely. Then again, the usage model probably doesn't really need unique MAC addresses.
I think the usage model does need unique MAC addresses. Maybe not for everybody, but for a decent portion of their customer base.
For example, there are apartment buildings that provide WiFi for their residents. If two residents buy the same button, chaos would ensue if the two buttons had the same MAC address. For the personal care stuff, merely having multiple people using multiple bathrooms who all want magic buttons to order more would do it.
It sounds like the button only connects to the network when it needs to (which makes sense to preserve power) so you could get away with it much of the time, but if two people hit their duplicate buttons simultaneously you'd have trouble.
I figured if they were trying to be (terribly) "clever", they might go with one-MAC-per-product. Thinking about it more, that should be impossible since, as per the article, a single button can be used for a selection of products in that category, so it'd be possible that 1 Tide button buys one Tide product, and another buys a different Tide product, based on my configuration.
My fear was that they'd pick 1 MAC and declare "this shall be the MAC of Tide buttons", increment that 1 for Bounty buttons, etc etc
I know it'd be terrible network practice and terrible standards-wise and just generally terrible, just figured I'd double-check before buying a crate of Tide buttons and discovering they all report the same MAC