MAC Address change

[adrianday]

Hi
I noticed in an info sheet for a 3com Gigabit NIC, that you can add to the driver load parameters a line that will change the MAC address of that card.
My question, is this true for any NIC if so where can i find info on what syntax and parameters i can use
Thanx
Adrian

 

[Provogeek]

You would need to check the documentation of the NIC in question to see if it supports it. So to answer your question, no, not all NICs support this function; it is also not a very good idea to use it unless you run into one of those rare ocurances that you have a MAC address conflict. Not sure of any other reason to use it my self.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Brent Schmidt Certified nut case
Senior Network Engineer

http://www.kiscc.com

 

[marvhuffaker]

To elaborate on Brent's reply.... It's hard enough to manage MAC addresses when using the one that is coded into the card. Now try changing them all and it's chaos.

I've only heard of one instance where in a very large network, some NICs got erroneously assigned duplicate MAC addresses from the factory. In this case, it was necessary to manually reassign them. Can't think of any other reason for it though.


Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[adrianday]

Thanks for your replys.

I will just look on a NIC by NIc basis to change MAC if needed.

The reason why i would want to change the MAC address. is that we have some Very Old ISDN Bridges. These have been set up ( not by me ) to detect the destination MAC address to bring up the line. I thought it may be easier to change the MAC on one NIC should it fail than reconfigure countless bridges.