On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 12:22 PM, Izaac <izaac@setec.org> wrote:
On Wed, Oct 03, 2012 at 06:52:57PM +0200, Seth Mos wrote:
"Pick a number between this and that." It's the 80's and you can still count the computers in the world. :)
And yet, almost concurrently, IEEE 802 went with forty-eight bits. Go figure. I'm pretty sure the explanation you're looking for is: It was with the word size of the most popular minis and micros at the time.
The 48 bit MAC was 1980; notable that it was not primarily handled in software / CPUs (ethernet key functionality is in dedicated interface hardware, though the stack is MAC-aware obviously). CPU register bit length is less critical when you have a dedicated controller of arbitrary bittedness handling MACs. -- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com