From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Mar 28 11:40:58 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mailhost.auckland.ac.nz (mailhost.auckland.ac.nz [130.216.1.4]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7E88937B726 for ; Wed, 28 Mar 2001 11:40:55 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from walker@gromit.ele.auckland.ac.nz) Received: from gromit.ele.auckland.ac.nz (IDENT:postfix@gromit.ele.auckland.ac.nz [130.216.216.23]) by mailhost.auckland.ac.nz (8.9.2/8.9.2/8.9.2-ua) with ESMTP id HAA26752; Thu, 29 Mar 2001 07:40:37 +1200 (NZST) Received: by gromit.ele.auckland.ac.nz (Postfix, from userid 501) id D34893EF0; Thu, 29 Mar 2001 07:40:36 +1200 (NZST) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 07:40:36 +1200 From: Jamie Walker To: Andrew Hesford Cc: Edward , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: MAC Message-ID: <20010329074036.C16495@auckland.ac.nz> References: <3AC19A18.EDCF8A4@hotmail.com> <20010328093519.A12297@cec.wustl.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i In-Reply-To: <20010328093519.A12297@cec.wustl.edu>; from ajh3@chmod.ath.cx on Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 09:35:19AM -0600 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 09:35:19AM -0600, Andrew Hesford wrote: > The MAC address of a network card is hard-wired. Occassionally, the card > manufacturer will let you change a few digits, but this is dangerous and > can lead to network problems. > > I'm not sure who grants blocks of MAC addresses to card manufacturers, > it might be the FCC, or it might be ICANN. > > The idea behind a MAC address is to give a unique identifier to the > card, so protocols like TCP can figure out where to send packets. from the man pages - ifconfig(8) lladdr addr Set the link-level address on an interface. This can be used to e.g. set a new MAC address on an ethernet interface, though the mechanism used is not ethernet-specific. The address addr is specified as a series of colon-separated hex digits. If the in- terface is already up when this option is used, it will be briefly brought down and then brought back up again in order to insure that the receive filter in the underlying ethernet hard- ware is properly reprogrammed. This usually means the card must be placed in promiscuous mode. -- Fone: +64-9-373-7599 x4679 Room: 2.315, E&EE Dept, School of Engineering Work: jj.walker@auckland.ac.nz Home: jamiew@clear.net.nz ICQ: 5632563 or shout loudly To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message