On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 2:55 AM, Robert Moskowitz <rgm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I am in an IEEE 802 MACaddr debate right now, where there is a PAR proposal > that will segment the local scope address space. Quite a mess and I am very > depressed.... > > I use Cubieboards that do not have a registered CID to provide a global > MACaddr, and instead leaves it up to the OS to workout a local MACaddr. > > Is this the common case for ARMv7 (and v8) boards or the exception? > > What does the beagle boards do? wandboards? Oh, now Raspberry PI has > ethernet and what does it do? It's quite common to not assign a MAC. After all it needs to be stored somewhere. In a x86 device where the NIC is onboard the motherboard this is generally in the main PC BIOS and that assigns it on boot. In a PCI(e) NIC it's generally on a little eeprom on the board but with the ARM dev boards where the whole device is $35 and they don't even ship flash for a bootloader to reduce cost the added expense, even of a couple of cents, isn't in the manufacturers eyes isn't worth the cut in their profit. In the embedded/devboard/IoT space I would tend to say it's more the norm than the exception. As more expensive ARM devices appear such as servers and laptops I suspect that won't be the case for those devices as they're more consumer aimed and the added support costs alone of random MACs would justify a bit of extra costs on a chromebook or similar. I would have expected an organisation such as the IEEE 802 ethernet committee would already know this having done appropriate levels of research with the companies paying them for MACs, or in the case of the ARM space, not. It seems they really are out of touch :-) Peter _______________________________________________ arm mailing list arm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/arm
