On Wed, May 03, 2000 at 09:55:20PM -0400, Horst von Brand wrote:
>
> Makes sense: Different NICs will normally sit on different nets, where they
> can't interfere with one another if they have the same MAC. All you need
> really is that all MACs on each network segment are different, and a simple
> way to ensure this is to make them depend on the machine serial number.
> Also simplifies network management a bit if a machine with a fried NIC
> doesn't show up with a new MAC later, and shows up everywhere with the same
> MAC.
<clueless>
If the MAC is set dependent on machine number, then aren't we back
to the question of which NIC gets which MAC? Also, when would you
set the MAC address?
The story so far:
1. People want the same NIC to be the same interface every time.
2. An idea was to have a 1-1 mapping from MAC to interface number.
3. I said that cards could exist with duplicate MAC addresses.
4. Lots of discussion ensued such as "no they can't", "yes they can",
"it's unlikely", "we can just change the MAC", ...
Maybe I don't understand your comment.
</clueless>
Maybe it would be possible to set the MAC address based on the machine
serial number when the card is first recognized, and then the admin
could set up the mapping from MAC to interface. But some admins
wouldn't want to change the MAC address on the card.
Is there a utility to change the MAC on a NIC? If so, then there
really won't be too much difficulty if duplicates do exist (I know
that there's a really small chance of this). Maybe the OS could
recognize a duplicate NIC on the same segment and "route around"
the problem by changing the MAC on the fly. I don't even know
if this is possible.
Tim
-- Tim Coleman <tim@beastor.mine.nu> Software Developer/Systems Administrator/RDBMS Specialist/Linux Advocate University of Waterloo Honours Co-op Combinatorics & Optimization "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." -- Mark Twain
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