Q I am writing an intranet application for Windows NT 4.0 and am looking for the media access control (MAC) and TCP/IP addresses for my workstation. Is this information in the Registry and, if so, is it encoded?

Arthur Jelsma, software developer in Watertown, S.D.

A You should be able to find the Registry entry containing the network adapter MAC address by searching for the string "HardwareAddress." On my machine, I found the string under \System\Current ControlSet\Services\DHCP\DhcpInfo00.

The value for HardwareAddress is listed in plain text. The Registry entry lists the MAC address as hexadecimal bytes separated by blanks: 'HardwareAddress 00 00 86 14 09 c7.' When you export the Registry information to a text file, the information appears as "HardwareAddress"=hex: 00,00,86,14,09,c7.'

You can find the TCP/IP address by looking for "DhcpIPAddress." The hexadecimal value is stored in the same blank-separated byte format as the MAC address.

Q Can you recommend some good, simple modem-pooling software to use with an NT-based intranet? We are running LANSource Technologies, Inc.'s WinPort software on a DOS Version 5, 386 machine. We recently upgraded to WinPort Version 5, which was almost impossible to configure.

Barbara Carlson, PC LAN support, Holmes & Narver, Inc., Orange, Calif.

A There are other modem-pooling packages but for your DOS environment, WinPort is probably the most straightforward. The majority of modem-pooling options are built for Windows, and most require dedicated modem server hardware.

You could explore other outbound modem-pooling options, especially since you might face a Year 2000 problem with the 386. For example, you could replace the 386 with a terminal server or, perhaps, you could use the Internet, an extranet or a virtual private network. Using one of these options, you might be able to redeploy those outbound modems for dedicated inbound access.

Blass is a network architect at Houston-based Sprint Paranet, a distributed computing systems services provider.