James Wilkinson wrote:
Marvin Dickens wrote:
MAC addresses contained in the eeproms of network equipment are
absolutely unique and singular. There
is no possibility of the a MAC address having plurality unless the MAC
address in the eeprom contained in the network equipment has been
altered by someone with a hex editor and an eeprom burner. Sure, you can
alias the MAC address using software, but the MAC address in the eeprom
is *never* altered.
This is a lovely theory and generally true.
But this is the computer industry. There have been various "budget"
Ethernet manufacturers that have used the same MAC for an entire
production run, to save costs.
If they go into the consumer market, there's no problem. In businesses,
too, provided they buy their computers individually. But if you buy a
multipack of really identical Ethernet cards...
I understand that this is a real pain to track down if you haven't seen
it before.
James.
Never encountered it before. But, then again, I've done work
for anyone who purchased networking equipment that was that
cheap. In this context, cheap refers to cutting corners in
an area of last resort that affects product quality.
One of the services we provide is that of repairing network
equipment. The lowest end equipment that we work on is made
by cisco. Also, we don't work on nics - there is no money in
it. All of the work I do is on routers, switches, hubs and
blades.
Best
Marvin Dickens
