Unique MAC Addresses?!?!?!?!?!

[the.lo...@gmail.com]

Yo,

I work with networked medical equipment and there are several companies that manufacture devices that are dual honed, where the device is specifically designed to have each NIC connected to a separate VLAN. So the manufacturers actually assign the same MAC address to each NIC. Duh?! In response to this, I just finished reading ISO/IEC 15802-1, and strangely, I didn't see anything that stated, or implied that MAC addresses have to be unique.

What's up with this?

Thanks,
Ed

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

the.lo...@gmail.com wrote:

> I work with networked medical equipment and there are
> several companies that manufacture devices that are dual honed,
> where the device is specifically designed to have each NIC
> connected to a separate VLAN. So the manufacturers actually
> assign the same MAC address to each NIC. Duh?!

Yes. As well as I understand it, when the standard was made that
was one of the choices. The only one I ever knew to do it was Sun.

Specifically, the address was in ROM on the CPU board, and was used
by all ethernet ports on the machine.

Then again, that was before VLANs were invented.

> In response to this, I just finished reading ISO/IEC 15802-1,
> and strangely, I didn't see anything that stated, or implied
> that MAC addresses have to be unique.

Well, yes, they have to be unique, but is it by port or
by host. Both are allowed.

> What's up with this?

Works fine unless you want two (or more) in the same LAN.

-- glen

[Stephen]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 05:09:02 +0000 (UTC), glen herrmannsfeldt
<g...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

>the.lo...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> I work with networked medical equipment and there are
>> several companies that manufacture devices that are dual honed,
>> where the device is specifically designed to have each NIC
>> connected to a separate VLAN. So the manufacturers actually
>> assign the same MAC address to each NIC. Duh?!
>
>Yes. As well as I understand it, when the standard was made that
>was one of the choices. The only one I ever knew to do it was Sun.
>
>Specifically, the address was in ROM on the CPU board, and was used
>by all ethernet ports on the machine.

Some protocols encode layer 3 info into the MAC address - main one was
Decnet phase 4.

A Decnet router would end up with the same MAC address on each
interface on the same logical area. AFAIR XNS was similar.

Routers which also handle other protocols and alloow this stuff to be
configured dynamically such as a Cisco would have multiple MACs per
port - 1 native + 1 for a Decnet config on the port and so on.

>
>Then again, that was before VLANs were invented.
>

A lot of VLAN capable bridging kit now operates with MAC table per
VLAN (or the VLAN tag is part of the look up table)

You need this even with unique MAC addresses if 2 VLANs on the same
switch are linked via layer 2 bridging elsewhere, since your unique
MAC will end up being known in both VLANs.

Since that bit works, same MAC on multiple interfaces from a host will
work as well by side effect
- but bridging between VLANs at that point generates huge confusion as
the apparent ports for the traffic source switch around as packets
arrive from different sources

>> In response to this, I just finished reading ISO/IEC 15802-1,
>> and strangely, I didn't see anything that stated, or implied
>> that MAC addresses have to be unique.
>
>Well, yes, they have to be unique, but is it by port or
>by host. Both are allowed.
>
>> What's up with this?
>
>Works fine unless you want two (or more) in the same LAN.
>
>-- glen

--
Regards

stephe...@xyzworld.com - replace xyz with ntl

[Michelot]

Hi Ed,

> I didn't see anything that stated, or implied that MAC addresses have
> to be unique.

The U/L bit in the MAC address (U for universal and L for local) is
never checked in bridges. It's up to the user to take care for having
a unique MAC address in the VLAN domain.

There is no problem to exchange data between 2 equipments in 2
different VLAN with the same MAC address. Each VLAN domain is
associated to a distinct IP subnet.

Best regards,
MIchelot