Networking and servers • DHCP reservations on router and changed MAC address

I use DHCP reservations with the home network rather than static IP addresses so that if I take one of my RPis to another network, I won't have any conflicts with how that network hands out IP addresses..
All of the sudden this afternoon, a RPi3B+ using a reserved address was not accessible via VNC or SH.I hooked up a monitor, keyboard and mouse to it to find that it was not using its assigned IP address. Further investigation shows that the WIFI mac address was not the address that been used successfully (and used many times) when the DHCP reservation was setup.

Now, my question is, how/why did the WIFI MAC address of the RPi change?
I thought they were permanently assigned. I know of nothing that I did that would have caused it to change, except to reboot the RPi.

Anybody got an explanation for the changed MAC address?

Thanks in advance

-splasher

System Information:
pi@rpi3-utility:~ $ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)"
NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="11"
VERSION="11 (bullseye)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bullseye
ID=raspbian
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianForums"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianBugs"

Statistics: Posted by splasher — Fri Feb 07, 2025 7:34 pm — Replies 0 — Views 44

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