> Stuart Henderson wrote: > >The 00:00:5e:xxx MAC used by CARP (and VRRP) is multicast. I don't > >think you can change a multicast lladdr to a unicast one. > > CARP does use multicast yes, but unless I forgot something, or don't > understand something, there isn't any MAC address that are specifically > assign to multicast only like the IP address range 224.x are? Am I > missing something here? Sorry if that's so stupid of me.
0x:00:5e are multicast-specific MAC addresses - I learned about this because shortly after the lladdr option to ifconfig was introduced there was a thread here where somebody tried to assign one by mistake, as a result ifconfig verifies that the requested MAC is of the correct class. http://www.rhyshaden.com/multicas.htm has some details on this. > Technically possible of course, economically not however. At $2,500.00 > to $4,000.00 a month for a new one at current prices now there, oppose > to the one in use now for many years that is grand farther in, ( I was > the forth contract signed at the time and in the first 10 active > sessions then) I don't see it as a viable option at this time. Not cheap > as a choice. Ah, I see. I only know a little about peering points (and all of that European) - I know many (most?) restrict traffic on the 'normal' lan to unicast IP/ARP (I guess partly to ensure the core switches don't encounter frames more likely than usual to trigger unexpected behaviour) and the number of MAC addresses per port is often restricted, but I haven't heard of charging separately for IP addresses before (though I guess a restriction of 1 MAC address on a port does the same thing).
