On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, John Whitnack wrote:
> Is there a way to get a person MAC address using apache, mod_perl or
> javascript. I have yet to find a way to do this? I need a way to
> uniquely identify the computer a person is using (i.e. not ip address).
>
> John Whitnack
>
If I'm correct, MAC address is a means of identifying some
communication devices sharing a commun physical link, like Ethernet.
For instance, SLIP and PPP do not use any. They do not need to since
they are used in peer to peer communication.
So let's suppose your client is hooked on an Ethernet segment.
According to TCP/IP operation (TCP/IP Illustrated by Stevens is a good
reference), getting at the client PC MAC address would require your
Apache server to have one NIC share the client Ethernet segment.
In such a case, it would be possible to perform an ARP request, or scan
the Apache server ARP cache with a command like (Linux)
# /sbin/arp -a | grep 'clientIP''| cut -d' ' -f4
to fetch the MAC address.
Otherwise, the best bet would be to have Javascript deliver it
to your Apache server as a mere data. But I do not see in the
Javascript specs any provision for doing that.
Good luck
Franck
---------------------------------------------------
| A fashion rules each age, without most people |
| being able to see the tyrants that rule them. |
| [Albert Einstein] |
---------------------------------------------------
