About Serial Numbers and MAC Addresses

Learn about the unique identifiers for Vocera devices and devices used with the Vocera system.

Vocera uniquely identifies devices by the MAC Address field as an alphanumeric value. The Vocera system can derive the MAC address from the serial number, also an alphanumeric value. When you add or update a device and enter the serial number for a Vocera badge, the MAC Address field is populated automatically.

The length of serial numbers varies per device type:

Table 1. Serial Number Length per Device Type

Device Type	Serial Number Length
V5000 Smartbadge	14
B3000n	12
B3000	12
B2000	12
Smartphone	10
Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7921G, 7925G, and 7926G	12

Most MAC addresses for Vocera badges have the following 6-character prefix: 0009ef where the last 6 characters of the MAC address are identical to the last 6 characters of the serial number. Vocera Smartphones have a different MAC address range than Vocera badges.

When you add or update a Vocera badge, Vocera checks for consistency of the serial number with the MAC address. The last 6 characters of the serial number must match the last 6 characters of the MAC address. If you provide a Vocera badge serial number without a MAC address, the system automatically fills in the value, whether you are using the Administration Console to add or update the device or are importing the data from a CSV file.