How to / is it possible to change Vendor Name in ESP8266-12E?

Question

I am aware of that it is possible to change hostname for ESP8266 but I want to change vendor name also so that it lists my company/product name in routers/firewalls.

Is it possible?

Answer 1

No. The Vendor Name is associated with the OUI. The OUI is the first three parts of the MAC address.

The OUI's are all registered with IEEE here and Espressif's entries are:

18-FE-34   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
24-0A-C4   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
24-B2-DE   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
2C-3A-E8   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
30-AE-A4   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
3C-71-BF   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
54-5A-A6   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
5C-CF-7F   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
60-01-94   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
68-C6-3A   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
80-7D-3A   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
84-0D-8E   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
84-F3-EB   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
90-97-D5   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
A0-20-A6   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
A4-7B-9D   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
AC-D0-74   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
B4-E6-2D   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
BC-DD-C2   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
C4-4F-33   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
CC-50-E3   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
D8-A0-1D   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
DC-4F-22   (hex)        Espressif Inc.
EC-FA-BC   (hex)        Espressif Inc.

The ESP8266 does not advertise the vendor. The router / other device maintains a list of OUI to Name mappings (on Linux it's stored in /usr/share/ieee-data) and uses them to create a pretty display.

You would need to

• Change the ESP8266's MAC address somehow
• Subscribe to IEEE and pay the relevant fees
• Be allocated an OUI
• Hope that every device in the world that would ever talk to your hardware updates its OUI mappings (which they seldom do).

Answer 2

You can change the MAC address in software, using wifi_set_macaddr(). Then you have the problem of storing that address in EEPROM and making sure every piece of code that you write for your product knows how to access it. You also need to add a step in your product release process that figures out what to store, and stores it, or you need to burn a different image in each unit that you sell. Plus you need to keep track of all the mac addresses you've ever issued so you don't issue duplicate ones. Plus, as @Majenko said, you would need to register your own OUI, which costs a few thousand dollars. So unless you plan to sell tens of thousand of your units, it's not worth doing.