Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!sun-spots-request From: stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun Subject: Re: Ethernet address of second board on Sun Keywords: Hardware Message-ID: <8905021932.AA03393@dawn.crd.Ge.Com> Date: 9 May 89 03:50:17 GMT Sender: usenet@rice.edu Organization: Sun-Spots Lines: 35 Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu Original-Date: Tue, 2 May 89 15:32:55 EDT X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 7, Issue 277, message 6 of 21 writes: Contrary to every law in the Ethernet world Sun has decided to give both boards the same Ethernet address. comments: Here is were the trouble starts. Assume I have a Sun with three ethernet interfaces that I would like to use as a gateway between the two class B nets ... [description of expected dire consequences] Ethernet boards with hard-wired Enet addresses went out of fashion long ago. Modern Enet interfaces are software configurable. The default Ethernet address assigned to a Sun is stored in a PROM on the cpu board, and the Enet interface is configured to that address at boot time. (This lets you change Enet interface boards without losing your Enet address.) For when you have more than one board, ifconfig lets you configure them to different Enet addresses: /etc/ifconfig ie0 8:0:20:1:9b:3a ... /etc/ifconfig ie1 8:0:20:1:9b:3b ... Obviously, a gateway also has to have a different IP address on each IP network. Further, it has to have a different hostname (a hostname is just a symbolic IP address). Assign each interface its IP address with ifconfig. It helps to use related hostnames, so people can recognize that they refer to the same machine. -- Dick St.Peters GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com uunet!steinmetz!dawn!stpeters GE would charge for opinions if it could find any. These are mine.