Arduino wifi shield questions

Wireless & IoT
1

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11287

I have this shield. I also have lots of questions:

  1. I tried to get mac address but I can only get it when the shield is connected to a router or otherwise all zeros. Why would wifi.macAddress() not return the MAC address, which should not depend on whether it is connected to a router?

  2. The MAC returned is consistent i.e. same value every time. But it is different from the numbers on the sticker.

Sticker:90-a2-da-0d-c8-fa

wifi.macAddress() return:78:c4:0e:01:7b:8b

Why?

  1. If the shield is connected via WPA2, will the connection be dropped if the shield doesn’t send anything for a period of time? Will the shield renew IP address automatically?

  2. Any documentation of the shield other than a simple list of library functions?

Thank you!