[FC1], 2.6.8-rc2 kernel, new motherboard problems

[Benjamin J. Weiss]

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Wednesday 21 July 2004 13:16, James Wilkinson wrote:
> >Sigh.
> >
> >Yes, it should be hard-coded. Probably the Windows drivers make up a
> >number and run with it. This is completely against the rules, but
> > with 48 bits of randomness, they're very unlikely to get caught.
> >
> >(The point about a MAC address is that it should be unique on the
> >network.
> 
> I was under the impression it should be unique globally.  Is this not 
> a piece of every tcp packet sent?  In which case is it mangled by 
> iptables somehow?  Its set to mangle, and any of these three machines 
> has network access with my setup, and I'm invisible to an nmap scan.
> 

MAC addresses are layer 2, not layer 3.  This means that they're used 
on the same subnet, but don't cross a router.  IIRC, MAC addresses don't 
cross switches either, only hubs or bridges.

If you use a sufficient level of randomness (or, heck, use a vendor code 
(the first three bytes) that hasn't been used yet) then you should be able 
to plug in to any network without issue.

If you're only using this box at home, then just ensure that you're not 
using a MAC address that's already in use on your network.

Ben