Donald Becker wrote:
> It's possible with most NICs, but a few have explicit hardware protection
> against it. The code to do it under Linux exists, but people are almost
> always wrong in their desire to do this.
>
It's extremely useful for some types of hot-standy setups. Some types
of channel-bonding might find it useful as well. Other than that, I
can't think of too many reasons either, but I'm sure someone else will :)
> > Beware: That doesn't actually change the NIC's idea of it's MAC on all
> > drivers. In other words, it may not accept the pkts destined to the MAC
> > you just set, unless you put it in promisc mode. It will send pkts with the
> > mac you set though...
>
> Errr, it should. The only caveat is that the station address must usually
> be changed while the interface is down, since changing it in mid-operation
> is ill-defined (and complicates the driver semantics).
>
> A driver for a device that cannot change the Rx filter should implement
> its own dev->set_mac_addr() entry that always returns an error.
>
I agree. I know my driver/card wouldn't/couldn't do it. I'll let you-all know which
one it was when I get back to my machine...
THanks,
Ben
--
Ben Greear [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pager: 202-2717
(623) 581 4980 "More weight!" -- _The Crucible._
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