GTA02 MAC addresses

Werner Almesberger werner at openmoko.org
Mon Jan 14 10:18:18 CET 2008


OpenMoko has recently obtained its own OUI, so we can now (finally :-)
assign proper MAC addresses. In GTA02, the following items needs one:

- BlueTooth
- WLAN
- Ethernet over USB. Two of them, one for the device and one for the host:
  http://bugzilla.openmoko.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1023

WLAN hardware brings its own MAC address, so we can just use that one.
BT comes with a set of MAC addresses from the vendor (en bloc, so we'd
still have to handle the assignment of individual addresses ourselves),
but we can choose to ignore them. (Well, politely return them.)

Now I'd like to get a sanity check for the assignment plan:

I was thinking of assigning three MAC addresses to each device. Can
anyone think of any other popular protocol sitting on top of something
else that would expect to get its own MAC address, like EoUSB does ?

Now, how do we assign them ? There are 24 bits to play with. I was
thinking of making allocations in blocks from which the factory then
picks addresses randomly. I think a block size around 16-18 bits
should do nicely.

Does anyone see a problem with using consecutive addresses for the same
device ? E.g., BT = base, EoUSB.device = base+1, EoUSB.host = base+2

- Werner




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