RANDOM MEDIA ACCESS CONTROL ADDRESS COLLISION DETECTION AND AVOIDANCE FOR WIRELESS NETWORK

摘要

Presented herein are systems and methods to detect and avoid MAC-address collision of a dynamic MAC address (also referred to herein as a “dynamically assignable MAC address” or a “dynamically allocated MAC address”) that is temporarily assigned to a network device in a wireless network. The systems and methods ensure that the dynamic MAC address is unique (and compatible with existing IEEE-802.11) to the wireless network prior to the network device using the address as its network identifier to gain access to the wireless network. The systems and methods involve an initial set of announcements between the network device and the wireless network and, in some embodiments, again when network device roams to another wireless network. The exemplified systems and methods facilitate use of network addresses that are structured according to standard conventions and that are backward compatible with existing MAC-address randomization schemes.