Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!haven!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What is my Ethernet address?
Keywords: Ethernet SunOS
Message-ID: <25843@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 2 Aug 90 10:17:51 GMT
References: <432@minya.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 23

There are several things to keep in mind here:

a. There may be no Ethernet address, or more than one Ethernet address.
b. The Ethernet addresses of two different interfaces may be the same.
   (This is perfectly normal on a Xerox NS packet forwarder, for instance.)
c. There may be some network interfaces with no Ethernet addresses.
d. The Ethernet address, if any, on any given interface may be changeable.

In article <432@minya.UUCP> jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers) writes:
>BTW, this is not really just a SunOS question.  I'd also like to find out
>how it's done on other Unix systems.  I'm aiming at a program that shows
>behavior like:
>	% addr -e se0
>	08:5A:00:6C:04:FC

Such a program could (given reasonable kernel support) handle all of
the things noted above.  Any kernel support devised (the obvious method
is an ioctl on a socket; a better [my opinion] method would be an ioctl
on the file descriptor resulting from an open of /dev/se0, e.g.]) should
keep these in mind as well.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@cs.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris