Nobody wants my info dump. I know way too much about networking and computers. The topics are massively deep, like iceberg levels of deep. One for each topic.

I would lecture for an entire day on the nuance and considerations of picking a Wi-Fi channel, or you can ignore me and just hit “auto” which may or may not take some, or all, of my considerations into account when selecting a channel.

If anyone is keen to hear some generally good advice about home networking, here’s my elevator speech:

Wire when you can, wireless when you have to. Wi-Fi is shared and half duplex, every wired connection is exclusive to the device and full duplex. If you can’t Ethernet, use MoCA, or powerline (depending on what internal power structures you have, this can be excellent or unusable, keep your receipts). Mesh is best with a dedicated backhaul, better with a wired backhaul. Demand it from any system you consider. The latest and greatest Wi-Fi technology probably won’t fix whatever problem you’re having, it will only temporarily reduce the symptoms and you won’t notice it for a while. Be weary about upgrading and ask yourself why you require the upgrade. Newer wireless won’t fix bad signal, or dropouts.

For everything else, Google. That’s how I find most of the information I know.

Good luck.

I’ll be around in case anyone has questions. No promises on when I’ll be able to reply tho.

Is this a kink?

The first six hexadecimal digits of the Mac address are referred to as the oui, or organizationally unique identifier. They are supposed to all be registered, but with modern systems, mac address randomization is common, so the Mac address in use can be little better than nonsense.

I have a theory that some of the more budget oriented manufacturers (think Ali express), just don’t bother using a registered mac address at all.

This all makes my job harder as a network admin, I usually need to look up what a device is by mac address to help identify what it is and what it’s doing. I need to make sure everything is on the right network, and I can’t do that if I don’t know what anything is.

The last six hexadecimal digits of the Mac are simply to uniquely identify the interface that the Mac is burned into. This also means that any systems with multiple network ports, have different mac address on each port. Some things are exempt, like network switches, but for the most part, every interface has, or is supposed to have, a unique mac address.

Also, the mac isn’t hex, it’s binary. Hex is just how we’ve decided to present it to users. The switches, routers, and interfaces don’t work with the hex, only the binary. Same for IP addresses, which normal are shown in “dotted decimal notation”, but are just binary. But you didn’t ask about IP.

Did you need me to whisper ouis into your ear and you can guess what company is registered to that oui?