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Date:      Sat, 17 Jun 2000 12:20:42 -0700
From:      Mike Smith <msmith@freebsd.org>
To:        "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie@TransSys.COM>
Cc:        cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG, cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/sys/sys sockio.h src/sys/net if.c src/sbin/ifconfig ifconfig.8 ifconfig.c 
Message-ID:  <200006171920.MAA01047@mass.osd.bsdi.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 17 Jun 2000 14:57:55 EDT." <200006171857.OAA04805@whizzo.transsys.com> 

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> > > On Fri, Jun 16, 2000 at 04:23:14PM -0700, John-Mark Gurney wrote:
> > > > consider that we use ether as a display for the MAC:
> > > > fxp0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
> > > >         ether 00:a0:c9:3c:5b:93
> > > > 
> > > > we should either add an alias for ether, or convert ether over to lladdr..
> > > 
> > > Agreed.  "ether" is probably the most understood.
> > 
> > Especially since this is the "ether" address we are setting.  All of the 
> > other address tokens are address-family specific, rather than 
> > layer-specific.
> 
> Sure, in this case it's an ethernet.  But FDDI also uses 48 bit MAC
> addresses.  Would you use the same IOCTL to provide physical layer addresses
> for other sorts of interfaces?  Firewire uses (I think) 64 bit MAC
> addresses. 802.11 use 48 bit addresses on their MAC, though most
> folks think and treat them like Ethernet interfaces.  
> 
> This is an instance of a general problem, and all the world is
> not a VAX, er, ethernet.

That's correct.  And that's why if you're setting an ethernet address, 
you should use 'ether', and if you're setting a FDDI MAC address you 
should use 'fddi', and if you're setting an RS485 multidrop address you 
should use eg. 'berknet' and so on.

-- 
\\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\  Mike Smith
\\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself,  \\  msmith@freebsd.org
\\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime.             \\  msmith@cdrom.com




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