Okay, I'll go into more detail then.
My router is a Speedport W701V, pretty old I guess. I'm using it with a laptop through built in WLAN, no adapter or something.
There is a list in which I must put the MAC-adress of the computer If I want it to be able to recognize the hotspot.
In other words: MAC cycling is impossible for me because as soon as the MAC adress changes, my connection is lost. Is that a problem?
It sounds like I could use only nzone.exe then, since my router has not been flashed. So I must find out if my Wifi card is compatible - thank you very much! I'll see if I can find the info.
...
Using this guide I installed the VMware player und downloaded the image. I started everything. But what now? The "adapter" (in this case my build in WLAN adapter) seems to be connected (though I don't know which one.. can't even select one? Should I start my hosted virtual network?) and everythings running fine. But I don't know what to do next. What is the SSID I can connect through with my 3DS? Or am I thinking in the wrong direction?
If I'm understanding this correctly, you only have one connection on your laptop which is your WLAN, yes? For nzone to work, you need to have two connections, either ethernet and WLAN or WLAN and a USB adapter. You need the one to connect to your WiFi and the other to broadcast the nzone SSID. If you use MAC filtering on your router, you need to put the MAC of the interface that is connecting to it in your ACL (Access Control List). This MAC will NOT cycle. It stays static. It is the secondary MAC, the one that hosts the nzone SSID, which gets cycled. So you can have filtering on your router and not worry about losing your connection ... Theoretically. BUT ... and this is a big "BUT", from what I understand of nzone (having read some of the older posts here), it doesn't differentiate between wireless interfaces when it resets the hosted network, so it could end up using your internal WiFi to connect to the router and the adapter to host for one cycle, and then switch the two around on the next cycle.
Having said that, it's easier to do using VMware/Linux/SpillPass etc. Linux and most *nix systems associate an interface name to your interfaces. For example, ethernet will generally be `en0`, `en1`, `en2` etc.; WiFi will be `wlan0`, `wlan1`, `wlan2` etc.; FireWire (how legacy and quaint it sounds
) would be `fw0`, `fw1`, `fw2` etc. and so on. For this reason, you can tell `ifconfig` (the util on certain *nix systems that controls your interfaces, it stands for i(nter)f(ace)config(urator)
) exactly which interface the cycling must be performed on. I haven't checked out the VMware image on here (purely because of lack of need) but I imagine that it also uses `ifconfig` to do the MAC changes.
With VMware, it is configured (generally) to share your internet connection from your machine instead of bridging it. What does this mean? Basically, with sharing, the VMware system talks to Windows (or whatever OS you're running it on) and tells Windows what to access on its behalf. It doesn't appear on your network as its own device; it shares the IP and MAC of your system. It's like that kid in the playground who would tease you from behind the bully but gets the bully to do all the dirty work. With bridging, the connection uses a virtual interface and bypasses your OS to talk to the router/modem/switch/hub itself. This way, it uses its own (virtual) MAC and gets its own IP so it appears on your network as a separate device.
If VMware were using a bridged connection, you would have to add the MAC of that bridge to your router's ACL, but if it uses sharing, you're fine with just having your laptop/desktop's MAC in the ACL. From a nzone perspective on the VMware image, the interface that connects to the internet is `br0` (presumably. As I said, I haven't checked it out so I could be wrong and it might be something like `bridge100`, which is the odd interface that OS X uses for internet sharing) and the interface hosting the nzone network on your WiFi adapter would presumably be `wlan0`. Nzone would then say "hey, `ifconfig` I would like to change the MAC address of `wlan0` to `AA:BB:CC
D:EE:FF` please!" and toggle only that interface, leaving the MAC of `br0` constant so the internet connection doesn't falter and it stays associated to any routers/hubs/switches/modems it's connected to.
Hopefully everything is a little bit clearer now.
I think I might start another thread here with Nzone FAQs, and maybe make some explanatory videos to put up on YouTube so people don't have to wade through the nearly 6000 posts on this thread!
Also thinking about building my own little VMware image with a modified XZone so Windows users can get in the XZone love.