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In a message dated: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 11:03:35 -0000
"Rich C" said:

>Yes but, if you are smart (as I'm sure you are, :) ) the NIC whose
>address you cloned is sitting on a shelf somewhere and NOT in your
>network. So again the MAC address of your router can be assumed to be
>unique.

[getting a little off topic here :) ]

This is a bizarre and extreme case, however, I have personally 
run into a case where multiple systems on the same network had NICs 
with identical MACs on them that were *not* the result of MAC 
spoofing.

At the time I worked for 3Com and the 3C509 card was basically the 
most popular NIC around.  3Com had several different versions of this 
card: one for a TP connector, one for AUI, one for BNC, and a "combo" 
card with all 3 connectors on it.  Since *no one* would ever possibly 
have all 4 instances of this NIC, and definitely not on the same 
network, they decided they could re-use MACs and get 4 times as many 
NICs using only 25% of the address space they had.  Seems like a good 
idea.  Except for the fact that all 3Com facilities could buy all 4 
versions of the card at cost or below :)

Since then, I've never relied on any system to really have the MAC I 
think it's supposed to have :)
- -- 

Seeya,
Paul


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