Forwarded From: "Robert G. Ferrell" <rootat_private> > We reported earlier on the brouhaha over the inclusion of hardware IDs in > the Pentium III chip and privacy advocates' concerns about it. Turns out > many of us already have hardware IDs on our systems since all Ethernet > cards have a MAC (stands for 'Media Access Control', whatever that > means!), Just in case anyone other than the above author is confused about this, the MAC is the lower sublayer of the datalink layer in the OSI model. It acts as an interface between the node's logical link control and the network's physical layer. The reason it's called a "Media Access" control is that it participates in interfacing the node with whatever network protocol and configuration (media) are present. >a six byte ID number that networks need to be sure to properly > direct network packets. The first three bytes (octets) are called the OUI (Organizationally Unique Identifier) and specify the manufacturer of the network interface adapter. Octets 4 through 6 are a unique "serial number" for each adapter. I've built a publicly-accessible search engine to identify the OUI for any given MAC address at rgfsparc.cr.usgs.gov:8090/sysadmin if anyone is interested. Robert G. Ferrell National Business Center, US DoI rferrellat_private -o- Subscribe: mail majordomoat_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Hacker News Network [www.hackernews.com]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 13 2001 - 13:23:22 PDT