News of ISC Developing BIND Patch

Thu Sep 18 19:10:57 UTC 2003

> On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 bdragon at 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.