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Date:      Fri, 09 Nov 2001 10:29:21 -0500
From:      Jason Andresen <jandrese@mitre.org>
To:        tlambert2@mindspring.com
Cc:        Leo Bicknell <bicknell@ufp.org>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: SIS 900 Onboard NIC /w SIS 735 Chipset Motherboard.
Message-ID:  <3BEBF651.A0E2A12A@mitre.org>
References:  <2AACFCDB6086274CA42D44085EF1BAA229405F@msm-001.msg.stcorp.com> <15338.62167.240104.199613@guru.mired.org> <20011108164512.A54891@ussenterprise.ufp.org> <3BEB0CC9.451A4B0F@mindspring.com>

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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        jandrese@mitre.org
 |\/ |  |    |    / _|  Network and Distributed Systems Engineer
_|  _|___|  _| _|_\___| Office: 703-883-7755


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