In recent testing of a Dell Universal Dock D6000, I found that MAC address pass through is not supported in the Linux drivers. However, this same device is supported in Windows 10 (Pro) on my personal computer, in as much as I was able to tell Windows to assign a new MAC address of my choosing, and I saw through wireshark the new MAC address was pushed out to the device. Afterward, Windows reported a new IP address and I was able to view web pages.
This series of patches give support to cdc_ncm USB based Ethernet controllers for programming a MAC address to the device, and also to retrieve the device's MAC address. This patch series further adds ACPI MAC address pass through support specifically for the cdc_ncm driver, and generally for any other driver that may need or want it, in furtherance of Dell's enterprise IT policy efforts. It was this latter that I initially found lacking when testing a D6000 with a Dell laptop, and then I found ifconfig was unable to set a MAC address into the device. These patches bring a similar level of functionality to cdc_ncm driver as is available with the Realtek r8152 driver, and is available with Windows. The cdc_ncm driver limits the ACPI MAC address pass through support to only the Dell Universal Dock D6000, so no other cdc_ncm device will be impacted. Charles Hyde (3): net: cdc_ncm: add get/set ethernet address functions ACPI: move ACPI functionality out of r8152 driver net: cdc_ncm: Add ACPI MAC address pass through functionality drivers/acpi/Makefile | 1 + drivers/acpi/acpi_mac_passthru.c | 63 ++++++++++++++ drivers/net/usb/cdc_ncm.c | 141 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- drivers/net/usb/r8152.c | 44 +--------- include/acpi/acpi_mac_passthru.h | 29 +++++++ 5 files changed, 234 insertions(+), 44 deletions(-) create mode 100644 drivers/acpi/acpi_mac_passthru.c create mode 100644 include/acpi/acpi_mac_passthru.h -- 2.20.1