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Date:      Thu, 19 Feb 1998 15:38:01 -0800 (PST)
From:      Doug White <dwhite@gdi.uoregon.edu>
To:        Norman C Rice <nrice@emu.sourcee.com>
Cc:        Nadav Eiron <nadav@barcode.co.il>, jgrosch@superior.mooseriver.com, questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: hostid equals Ethernet address or IP address ?
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.980219153649.658R-100000@gdi.uoregon.edu>
In-Reply-To: <19980219095703.59598@emu.sourcee.com>

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On Thu, 19 Feb 1998, Norman C Rice wrote:

> I find it hard to believe that NIC manufacturers would allow end users
> to freely change the MACs, especially the OUI portion. There would be no
> guarantee of uniqueness and I am sure that a new sport, ``MAC spoofing'',
> would soon be taken up by the crackers.

There are cases where two NICs on the same net had the same MAC.  Allowing
reprogramming saves the company from having to swap NICs.

This is esp. true on large extended LANs that use bridges rather than
routers.  It may not be much of an issue today tho since bridges aren't in
wide a use as they once were.

Doug White                              | University of Oregon  
Internet:  dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu    | Residence Networking Assistant
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite    | Computer Science Major






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