* Paul WALL <pauldotwall@gmail.com> [2014-04-22 19:30]:
Both CARP and VRRP use virtual router MAC addresses that start with 00:00:5e. This organizational unique identifier (OUI) is assigned to IANA, not OpenBSD or a related project. The CARP authors could have gotten their own from IEEE. OUIs are not free but the cost is quite reasonable (and was even more reasonable years ago when this unfortunate decision was made).
we're an open source project, running on a rather small budget almost exclusively from donations, so "quite reasonable" doesn't cut it.
The next two octets for IPv4 VRRP are 00:01. Highly coincidentally, the CARP folks *also* decided to use 00:01 after they got upset at the IETF for dissing their slide deck.
you're interpreting way too much in here. carp has been based on an earlier, never published vrrp implementatoin we had before realizing the patent problem. i don't remember any discussion about the OUI or, more general, the mac address choice. it's 10 years ago now, so i don't remember every single detail, changing the mac addr has pbly just been forgotten. not at least using sth but 00:01 for the 4th and 5th octet was likely a mistake. changing that now - wether just 4th/5th octet or to an entirely different, donated OUI - wouldn't be easy, unfortunately. acadmic discussion as long as we don't have a suitable OUI anyway.
If either of these decisions had not been made, we would not be having this discussion today.
we weren't really given a choice. as I said before, I'd much prefer we had just been given a multicast address etc. we tried. the IEEE/IETF/IANA processes have been an utter failure in our (limited) experience, not just in this case. might be different if you're $big_vendor with deep pockets, but that doesn't help either. fortunately this obviously isn't a big problem in practice, based on the fact that we don't get any complaints/reports in that direction. still would be way micer if that situation had been created in the first place, but as said - we weren't given that choice.
Nothing personal Henning (and I like what you did with OpenBGPd and OpenNTPd) but you'd gain a lot of respect in my eyes, as well as a bunch of other people's, if you publicly admitted the CARP OUI decision was a huge mistake.
huge? nah. mistake? probably.
If your lawyers have advised you not to apologize because of liability concerns (despite that "no warranty" bit in the BSD license) it's OK - I completely understand.
you live in a bizarre world apparently. but then, that's what the US (dunno wether that is your actual background, sounds that way tho) is when it comes to patents and liability in the eyes of the rest of the world. neither of us can change that, so be it. and just to prevent confusion: I didn't implement most of carp, but was involved, and I wasn't the one dealing with IANA/IETF/whatever either. No pun intended if I mixed up IETF, IANA, IEEE somewhere here, it's not like we create new protocols every other day. -- Henning Brauer, hb@bsws.de, henning@openbsd.org BS Web Services GmbH, AG Hamburg HRB 128289, http://bsws.de Full-Service ISP - Secure Hosting, Mail and DNS Services Dedicated Servers, Rootservers, Application Hosting