Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 16:45:12 -0500 From: Leo Bicknell <bicknell@ufp.org> To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: SIS 900 Onboard NIC /w SIS 735 Chipset Motherboard. Message-ID: <20011108164512.A54891@ussenterprise.ufp.org> In-Reply-To: <15338.62167.240104.199613@guru.mired.org>; from mwm@mired.org on Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 03:02:15PM -0600 References: <2AACFCDB6086274CA42D44085EF1BAA229405F@msm-001.msg.stcorp.com> <15338.62167.240104.199613@guru.mired.org>
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On Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 03:02:15PM -0600, Mike Meyer wrote:
> Could you provide a pointer to where you found it? An explanation of
> why users need to reprogram their MAC's - which is rather unusual -
> would help quite a bit.
There are several possibilities:
* 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.
* Some protocols (mostly all obsolete) required specific MAC
addresses.
* Some clustering software switches MAC's from one machine to
another to make the switch transparent at layer 2.
Older cards could only answer a single MAC, a small multicast MAC
list, and the broadcast MAC. I think most newer designs unify this
into a single "list of things I want", which could allow a card to
be multiple unicast MAC's at once.
--
Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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