Before submitting the new text, I went back and tried to find out
what the difference is between an MAC-48 and an EUI-48. In the
document:
http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/tutorials/UseOfEUI.html
I found the following:
"The (obsolete label) MAC-48 is a concatenation of a 24-bit OUI
assigned by the IEEE Registration Authority and a 24-bit extension
identifier assigned by the organization with that OUI assignment.
The EUI-48™ is a concatenation of a 24-bit OUI value assigned by the
IEEE Registration Authority and a 24-bit extension identifier
assigned by the organization with that OUI assignment."
and:
"The use of the MAC-48 identifier is obsolete; the EUI-48 or
EUI-64 should be used in current and future applications requiring
the use of unique 48-bit identifiers."
My reading of this is that from a technical point of view MAC-48 and
EUI-48 are equivalant. They are both have the same definition:
Mac-48: "a concatenation of a 24-bit OUI assigned by the IEEE
Registration Authority and a 24-bit extension identifier assigned by
the organization with that OUI assignment"
EUI-48: "a concatenation of a 24-bit OUI value assigned by the
IEEE Registration Authority and a 24-bit extension identifier
assigned by the organization with that OUI assignment"
They both use the same 24-bit OUI values. It looks to me like IEEE
decided to deprecate the name MAC-48. Why IEEE choose to have two
different ways to create EUI-64 from these 48-bit identifiers is a
mystery to me. As far as bits on the wire, EUI-48 and MAC-48 appear
to be exactly the same. The link in Jinmei's email that started this
discussion confirms this:
"The distinction between EUI-48 and MAC-48 identifiers is purely
semantic: MAC-48 is used for network hardware; EUI-48 is used to
identify other sorts of devices and software. (Thus, by definition,
an EUI-48 is not in fact a "MAC address", although it is
syntactically indistinguishable from one and assigned from the same
numbering space.)"
I will still plan to submit the new text as it clarifies our use of
these identifiers.
Bob
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