My experience is that most modern (and many older) PC NIC's are able to change their MAC address. The question really is, how should I do this from within FreeBSD.
Is there a standard entry into the drivers to do this? If you are wondering why I want to do this, I am looking at hot standby and redundant takeover stuff for high availability systems. Steve > On Fri, 14 May 1999, Nate Williams wrote: > > > I know it's possible to bridge ethernet segments under linux, and the > > > only way that bridging can be implemented is if the MAC address be > > > changed in software on a per-packet basis. > > > > What do you mean 'bridge ethernet segments'? > > A bridge will listen on two specific ethernet ports and decide which MAC > addresses are on which side of the bridge and only forward those packets > which need to cross the bridge. > > In addition, bridges use the IEEE spanning protocol to get rid of possible > loops when there are multiple bridges and switches connected together. An > ethernet switch is in essence a bridge with alot of ports. > > > > > > Very likely there are not kernel facilities to do this, but the > > > existence of bridging code convinces me that it must be possible to > > > alter mac address. > > > > Not that I'm aware of. Too many licensing schemes rely on mac addresses > > to provide the unique 'fingerprint' to have this be something that is > > easily doable. > > > > You're too stubborn here. If a linux box can bridge, then it logically > must be able to change MAC address on a per-packet basis. > > Also when a PC runs a DECNET client, it must also be able to change > ehternet addresses from the base value in the card. > > -- C. Mott > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to [email protected] with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
