From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stephen Hemminger Subject: Re: [net-next PATCH] igb: Use Intel OUI for VF MAC addresses Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:07:03 -0700 Message-ID: <20090910190703.25d14533@nehalam> References: <20090911014757.19631.66570.stgit@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: davem@davemloft.net, netdev@vger.kernel.org, gospo@redhat.com, Greg Rose , Jeff Kirsher , Don Skidmore To: Jeff Kirsher Return-path: Received: from mail.vyatta.com ([76.74.103.46]:32950 "EHLO mail.vyatta.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751365AbZIKCHJ (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:07:09 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20090911014757.19631.66570.stgit@localhost.localdomain> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:48:27 -0700 Jeff Kirsher wrote: > From: Gregory Rose > > This patch changes the default VF MAC address generation to use an Intel > Organizational Unit Identifier (OUI), instead of a fully randomized > Ethernet address. This is to help prevent accidental MAC address > collisions. How can probability of collision be lower when the address space is smaller? If you are going to use Intel OUI, then you should constrain the selection to a portion of that space that is not being used by other hardware. I.e if you know Intel assigns addresses to their devices in ranges, choose a range that is not in use.