18 Sep
2003
18 Sep
'03
7:10 p.m.
On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 bdragon@gweep.net wrote:
MAC addresses are not without authority delegation. The IEEE is the ultimate authority in said case.
Any solution which requires uniqueness also requires a singular ultimate authority.
Even MACs aren't entirely unique. Some places used to assign MAC addresses like they assigned IP addresses and the NIC had to be reconfigured for the assigned MAC. An admin was freely able to assign a MAC to Joe Blow using a 3Com or Cisco OUI without fear of retribution. I personally have never seen any use in such a thing but obviously someone did.
Justin
manufacturer assigned macs are guaranteed to be globally unique. A specific enterprise reconfiguring the mac is akin to an enterprise using RFC1918 space.