Re: [K12OSN] Printing Debacle; Getting a MAC Address

[Jim Thomas <jthomas leesburg bittware com>]

Caleb Wagnon wrote:
> 
> With our nics I just unplugged the cable and booted it up. When it sat there
> looking for a connection I wrote down its mac address. The first few octets
> are usually the same.

The first three octets of a MAC are the "Organizationally Unique
Identifier" or OUI.  It's purpose is to identify the manufacturer. 
Every NIC is supposed to have a unique MAC, so the mfg uses the last
three octets as a serial number.  If a manufacturer runs out of serial
numbers (you can encode 16 million with three octets), they can buy
another prefix from the IEEE for ~$1600 USD.

So the first three octets of two otherwise identical NICs should be
identical.

If you want to know who made your NIC, plug in the first three octets of
the MAC here:
http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/index.shtml

-- 
Jim Thomas            Principal Applications Engineer  Bittware, Inc
jthomas bittware com  http://www.bittware.com          (703) 779-7770
The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present -
Hobbes