I was helping a Fort Wayne computer repair client of mine in their office with their laptop.They needed help with various issues including connecting their laptop to their Wi-Fi hotspot app on their smartphone.  Instead of paying for an always-on internet solution like cable, frontier, microwave or satellite they use a wireless hotspot from their smartphone.  A persistent internet connection would be a waste of money for this office because it has one computer which is used lightly on the internet.

Somehow the laptop couldn’t connect to the hotspot after several months without problems. We ended up  re-establishing the link between the laptop and smartphone hotspot and creating a new password.  I was configuring the hotspot on the owner’s smartphone and noticed some higher security settings were available.

One of them was the ability to specify which computers could connect to the hotspot.  This would be done by specifying the computer’s MAC address.  Every computer has a unique MAC (Media Access Control) address and if it was entered into the hotspot, it could use the hotspot.  If it wasn’t entered, the computer couldn’t use the hotspot. Have you ever used this hotspot option?  I haven’t – I just turn my hotspot off when I’m not using it and I use a password on it.

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