This is often referred to as MAC spoofing. You may have noticed that I said the MAC is burned into the hardware, which begs the question: how are you able to change it? Well, your operating system reads the MAC from the card when it boots, but the OS can choose to put a different MAC into the data packets it sends out. Finally, some ISPs restrict Internet access to only specific MACs, and being able to change it gives you the freedom to use any device as your modem. Second, some networks apply (very ineffective) access control based on a list of “permitted” MAC addresses. First of all, you might want to change your MAC for privacy reasons (so people can’t track your machine). In most deployments, it should not be necessary to ever change your MAC, but there are some use-cases in which this ability can come in handy.
This MAC address needs to be unique on your network so that your Wi-Fi access point knows which device is sending it data, and which device it should reply to. Wi-Fi devices all have a (mostly) unique address burned into them when they are manufactured so that a meaningful media access control (MAC) protocol can be developed.
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