"Illegal MAC Address!?!"

[TheBlackMan]

Okay, so I recently purchased a Motorola WR850G Wireless Broadband Router. Along with that I have a Motorola WU830G Wireless USB Adapter. When I enable encryption on my router I am able to connect fine with the several PCI Wireless cards after I have entered their MAC addresses into the router (so it only accepts them), but when I try to enter the USB Adapter's MAC address it says that it is "illegal." What is up with this!?! It recognizes the USB Adpater's MAC Address when my router is open with no encryption and I am able to connect fine. I have also lowered the encryption for the USB Adpater so everything should be working fine, but this **** "illegal" thing has me puzzled. I've contacted Motorola and their reply was "Why don't you try searching Google!" I've already tried that, dumbasses. Anyway, help would be extremely appreciated. Thanks!

[gamehead200]

Will this help?

http://www.astromike.com/wireless.html

Are you sure you don't have two adapters on the network with the same MAC address?? Believe it or not, my aunt had two computers that had the adapters with the same MAC address...

[tguy]

Could you have possibly substituted a o or O for a zero or something like that?

Check characters closely. I got caught by that myself one time before.

[TheBlackMan]

I checked and no the MAC Addresses are not the same and I am entering the MAC address exactly as it says. I've also tried adding the MAC Address when I've had open encryption to the MAC Filter list automatically but I still got the "illegal" message so I know it's not how I'm typing it.

[TheBlackMan]

Any ideas anyone!?!

[JoeMSFN]

I know with netgear routers you Type in a MAC address you have to use ":" instead of "-" (maybe the otherway around) to separate each 8bit hex number (00 through FF) or it considers it illegal. Sometimes entering the MAC address without any separaters or perhaps spaces.

for example:

01-23-45-67-89-AB
01:23:45:67:89:AB
01 23 45 67 89 AB
0123456789AB

Note: valid characters are (excluding commas) 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F in groups of two characters (see above code box for an example).

I'm not sure how you got it to recognize your one card, but sometimes (before you activeate MAC filtering) when you go to add an address to the list, it will have the cards already associated with the router/access point in the list for you to select and click ADD. If your router has that feature:

1. turn off filtering

2. get your card to connect to your router/AP

3. (in router/AP setup) go to add MAC address to filter

4. select your usb cards address

5. APPLY (or however your routers interface works)

6. then finally turn filtering on again.

(make sure in step 2 you can actually surf the web before going to step 3)

[TheBlackMan]

I know with netgear routers you Type in a MAC address you have to use ":" instead of "-" (maybe the otherway around) to separate each 8bit hex number (00 through FF) or it considers it illegal.  Sometimes entering the MAC address without any separaters or perhaps spaces.

for example:

01-23-45-67-89-AB
01:23:45:67:89:AB
01 23 45 67 89 AB
0123456789AB

Note: valid characters are (excluding commas) 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F in groups of two characters (see above code box for an example).

I'm not sure how you got it to recognize your one card, but sometimes (before you activeate MAC filtering) when you go to add an address to the list, it will have the cards already associated with the router/access point in the list for you to select and click ADD.  If your router has that feature:

1. turn off filtering

2. get your card to connect to your router/AP

3. (in router/AP setup) go to add MAC address to filter

4. select your usb cards address

5. APPLY (or however your routers interface works)

6. then finally turn filtering on again.

(make sure in step 2 you can actually surf the web before going to step 3)

My router does have the add feature that you talk about and I've tried doing that, but I still get the "illegal" message. Also, the router automatically spaces the MAC address out with semicolons (. This is really bugging me...