From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri May 14 18:40:56 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mail-out1.apple.com (mail-out1.apple.com [17.254.0.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B583154AC for ; Fri, 14 May 1999 18:40:54 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from justin@walker3.apple.com) Received: from mailgate2.apple.com ([17.129.100.225]) by mail-out1.apple.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA27546 for ; Fri, 14 May 1999 18:40:54 -0700 Received: from scv4.apple.com (scv4.apple.com) by mailgate2.apple.com (mailgate2.apple.com- SMTPRS 2.0.15) with ESMTP id ; Fri, 14 May 1999 18:40:53 -0700 Received: from walker3.apple.com (walker3.apple.com [17.219.24.201]) by scv4.apple.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA51906; Fri, 14 May 1999 18:39:12 -0700 Received: by walker3.apple.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) id SAA00629; Fri, 14 May 1999 18:40:53 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199905150140.SAA00629@walker3.apple.com> To: Nate Williams Subject: Re: ifconfig: changing mac address Cc: Steve.Gailey@db.com, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199905141618.RAA03237@pow.srv.uk.deuba.com> Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 18:40:49 -0700 From: "Justin C. Walker" Reply-To: justin@apple.com X-Mailer: by Apple MailViewer (2.105.dev) Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG [Apologies if this is duplicated, sort of; I inadvertently lost power as I was sending a reply to this, and I don't have a record that it was sent]. > From: Nate Williams > Date: 1999-05-14 10:11:52 -0700 > To: Steve.Gailey@db.com > Subject: Re: ifconfig: changing mac address > Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG > In-reply-to: <199905141618.RAA03237@pow.srv.uk.deuba.com> > Delivered-to: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org > X-Mailer: VM 6.34 under 19.16 "Lille" XEmacs Lucid > X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > > Is it possible to change the mac address of an ethernet card using > > ifconfig? > > Not in any 'standard' card, no. Some cards (in SUN workstations) allow > you to swap the EEPROM with the mac address, and I'll bet somewhere > someone has designed a card with a programmable mac address, but > normally it's not settable. I don't believe this is correct. The cards I'm familiar with only accept unicast packets when programmed with a specific MAC address. This is normally the one that's in a ROM associated with the device somehow, but there's no reason it can't be changed. DECNet, for example, assumes for some protocols at least, that the MAC address is one from the block of addresses owned by DEC. CompaqNet? Sheesh. Regards, Justin -- Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon-At-Large * Institute for General Semantics | Manager, CoreOS Networking | When crypto is outlawed, Apple Computer, Inc. | Only outlaws will have crypto. 2 Infinite Loop | Cupertino, CA 95014 | *-------------------------------------*-------------------------------* To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message