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Anyone know why 802.11 Acknowledgement Frames have no source MAC address? I don't see it when I capture the packets from TCPDUMP or Wireshark from Linux with a monitor-mode and promiscuous-mode driver. How does the Access Point distinguish ACK frames from different 802.11 clients if there is no source MAC addresses in the frame?

I can see from all the captures that the ACK comes immediately after the frame is sent (around 10 to 30 microseconds) but that alone can't be enough to distinguish the source can it? Maybe each frame has some kind of unique identifier and the ACK frame has this ID inside it? Maybe there is identifying information in the encrypted payload since the WLAN uses WPA-PSK mode?

George Ou
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  • Question has an answer on SO: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37040303/why-do-802-11-acknowledgement-frames-have-no-source-mac – Eknoes Dec 16 '17 at 17:25

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