Find comp on Net w/ MAC address?

[Geraldo8022]

We had some things stolen from the community center. Someone said we could find the machines if and when they went online with them by using the Mac address. I've never heard of this. Is it possible to find who has these items by relating the MAC to a physical address?

 

[seepy83]

Although they are unique, MAC addresses are only used on the layer 2 broadcast domain (LAN, basically ) that they are directly connected to. You're not going to find a device on the internet based on knowing the MAC. Most of the time, an ISP wouldn't even know if that device was connecting to the internet through their network because almost everyone NATs these Days. Check the Networking forum...there was recently a thread about this and a subsequent arguement about the uniqueness of MACs that was somewhat amusing.

 

[Geraldo8022]

Ok, thanks for the reply.