Terry Lambert wrote: > > Leo Bicknell wrote: > > * Users wish to replace a card but have it use the same MAC > > address due to filters, static arp entries, caches that take too > > long to expire, bootp entries that are based on MAC address, etc. > > For years cards had the MAC in a separate ROM to make this possible > > with a chip swap too. > > I forgot this one. > > Mostly, though, this is done for licensing software that uses > the MAC as the machine serial number. Lot of code does that > on Windows... and not a little code on UNIX.
Hmm. I seem to remember a few years back when several software shops wanted NIC manufacturers to remove the ability to change the MAC in their cards because they were afraid their MAC based security schemes were being defeated by people throwing in old NICs in their machines, not plugging them in, and then setting them all to the same MAC address. Fortunatly I think this never took off. -- \ |_ _|__ __|_ \ __| Jason Andresen [EMAIL PROTECTED] |\/ | | | / _| Network and Distributed Systems Engineer _| _|___| _| _|_\___| Office: 703-883-7755 To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
