How does my University network know what type of device im using ?

[Tarazena]

Hi

my university offers wireless network for the students, there are three networks ( Microsoft, Apple, and Android ), if i was trying to access the internet through Microsoft Wireless Network on my iPhone, a message appears that im using the wrong wireless network.

my question is how do they know which device type im using ?

and sorry for my English :)

Thanks

[|Rapture|]

MAC address or user agent maybe?

[djdanster]

MAC address? I know with a MAC address you can narrow it down to the device manufacturer. I think it can even narrow it down to a specific model. It's a possibility they have a list of MAC address ranges for each device manufacturer and so can filter that way.

[Tarazena]

Thank you guys, you made my day :D

[Southern Patriot]

Hi

my university offers wireless network for the students, there are three networks ( Microsoft, Apple, and Android ), if i was trying to access the internet through Microsoft Wireless Network on my iPhone, a message appears that im using the wrong wireless network.

my question is how do they know which device type im using ?

and sorry for my English :)

Thanks

The better question would be why in the **** do they split up their network that way? That makes no logical sense.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

The first three bytes of a MAC address are its OUI, which are assigned by an IEEE Registration Authority. One publicly available list of OUI's is available here on their web site.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[Ambroos]

Hello,

The first three bytes of a MAC address are its OUI, which are assigned by an IEEE Registration Authority. One publicly available list of OUI's is available here on their web site.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Well that gives you the manufacturer of the network card you're using but not what OS you're running, which is ridiculous.

I suspect they just use a proxy that looks at your browsers user agent string.

Try this: if you use Chrome, hit F12, then the "settings" gear in the lower right corner. Hit "Overrides" and mark "User Agent". Set it to Firefox 7 Mac for example. Then try again on the Apple network. It'll probably work :)

[LUTZIFER]

Well every device must have some sort of signature built in, cuz say when you hook up Bluetooth devices. Windows or whatever OS or other devices know exactly what device is being connected. Or when you do some sort of product update scan on a website, it knows what brand and model of computer you're running and everything inside it. So there's gotta be something giving out all that info.

[Glassed Silver]

The difference might be that porn only works on the networks for the "obscure" systems... :p

Glassed Silver:ios

[Julius Caro]

The MAC addresses will only tell you the manufacturer of the WiFi module, it won?t tell you whether it was used on a phone or not, and if it was, which phone (in fact, one could there are cases of identical wifi modules being used on devices with all operating systems).

If you have to log in via a website (those wifis that first take you to a website no matter what), they get it from the user agent you use.

Other than that, WTF at the network split.

[HawkMan]

Well every device must have some sort of signature built in, cuz say when you hook up Bluetooth devices. Windows or whatever OS or other devices know exactly what device is being connected. Or when you do some sort of product update scan on a website, it knows what brand and model of computer you're running and everything inside it. So there's gotta be something giving out all that info.

Bluetooth devices specifically send ID's as part of their connection, WiFi doesn't, though it could, but it's not part of the handshake. The reason why bluetooth does this should be fairly obvious ;)

and when you do a update scan on a website, most of them will use a java app to check the hardware on your computer.

[+BudMan MVC]

As to why the odd way of splitting connections up - hmmm.

So you want to split your users up between different AP for load reasons. I would assume they are not all running off the same AP with just different SSIDs? This would be one way to do it without wireless controller to balance load between AP for you.

How else would you split it up with info you could see on the connection without user interaction - user-agent would have the different info for sure.

Just a guess mind you - but would be curious to know the actual reason.. OP can you ask someone in IT at your univ why they do that?