Recently, I upgraded my Ubuntu to ver. 17.04 from 16.x and wasn’t able to connect to the Internet via WiFi. This caught my attention and I was able to sort out the issue. Digging more into it I got to know that the issue is with the Network Manager in Ubuntu which randomizes the MAC address of a WiFi Chipset when connecting to WiFi for security purpose I guess but somehow it doesn’t work out. I wasn’t able to connect to the Internet anyway.
Simple solution to this issue is to stop the device to use random MAC address. You can do this by editing the NetworkManager.conf file. You can use any editor to do so.
To open the file using terminal
gksu gedit /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
Add the below lines at the end of the file. The file may have few lines of its own.
[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no
Restart the network manager from terminal
sudo service network-manager restart
Done!!
