Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 15:43:15 -0400 (EDT) From: "Mark J. Taylor" <mtaylor@cybernet.com> To: Daniel Eischen <eischen@vigrid.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ifconfig: changing mac address Message-ID: <XFMail.990514154315.mtaylor@cybernet.com> In-Reply-To: <199905141918.PAA01313@pcnet1.pcnet.com>
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One of the purposes of changing the MAC address is for server redundancy. Suppose that one of your "important" servers went down. Wouldn't it be nice for the alternative server (a mirror) to get the "important" server's MAC address (and IP address(es), and AppleTalk address, etc.), so the client's ARP caches don't have to timeout before they can access the "important" server again (aka the mirror)? -Mark Taylor NetMAX Developer mtaylor@cybernet.com On 14-May-99 Daniel Eischen wrote: >> > Is it possible to change the mac address of an ethernet card using >> > ifconfig? >> >> Not in any 'standard' card, no. Some cards (in SUN workstations) allow >> you to swap the EEPROM with the mac address, and I'll bet somewhere >> someone has designed a card with a programmable mac address, but >> normally it's not settable. > > Yeah, we've got some Dy-4 m68k-based single board computers that > allow the lower 3 bytes of the MAC address to be programmed. It's > kind of annoying though, because the lower 3 bytes are always > set to 0 and we have to uniquely set them for each board that > we deliver to our customer. > > The MAC addresses were meant to be unique; why do you want the > ability to change them? So you can make M$ viruses without > anyone figuring it out who made them ;-)? > > Dan Eischen > eischen@vigrid.com > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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