[ale] NICs with settable MAC addrs?

[Byron A Jeff]

> Here's the line from the diagnostics page at scyld.com:
> 
> -H 00:11:22:33:44:55 Set the hardware MAC station address to the specified value. This should never be done. 
> 

There is a good reason for it for the unscyld ;-)

> This was my understanding as well, that each MAC address was unique and should be left alone.  This only reason I can think to do this is to replace an older piece of hardware with a newer without some part of the network seeing that it's a new piece.  Is that what this is for?
> 

That's reason number one. The other  is if you wish to have a completely
seemless backup machine takeover on the network when the primary fails.
Since they have the same MAC address none of the other hardware on the network
can tell that a switchover occured.

In my case  my cable modem is MAC address locked and will not talk to hardware
that doesn't have the preprogrammed MAC address. So i can install new network
hardware that still works with my modem.

As for the unscyld, you can have major problems if you have two pieces of
network equipment on the same physical network with the same MAC address.
Unless you have specifically programmed software creating a primary/secondary
situation, you'll have chaos.

BAJ
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