[Freedombox-discuss] Thoughts on MAC Addresses

[Johan Henselmans]

On 3 dec. 2012, at 06:04, Nick M. Daly <nick.m.daly at gmail.com> wrote:

> Just something kicking around my head when I should be sleeping :)
> 
> *If* preventing people from being identified by MAC addresses should be
> a goal, how do we accomplish that?  The MAC address can, but shouldn't
> be set in the firmware, we can't change it or set it, from the running
> system, there.  That's good, because it means the bootloader can't be
> changed on a running system.
> 
> So, where can we set the MAC address?  The obvious solution is to put it
> into /etc/networking/interfaces, but that'll harm folks who want some
> form of anonymity.  We can use 0:0:0:0:0:0 as a default MAC address in
> /etc/networking/interfaces and folks who want to set a static one can
> edit the file to set it there, while folks who want to use a MAC changer
> can run a service hooked through Plinth.
> 
> Is this crazy?  If not, anybody want to write a Plinth interface to
> macchanger?  Anybody want to write an Augeas interface to Plinth that
> can write to /etc/networking/interfaces ?
> 

Setting it to 0:0:0:0:0:0 would prevent two freedomboxes to make contact. If one 
thinks about mesh-networking of some kind 
(babel, see http://www.pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr/~jch/software/babel/)
then a MAC address would be required. 

Can't one claim a set of ethernet addresses at the appropriate authorities (IEEE), and then  
choose one of these randomly? When the address is already occupied, take another one, etc.

I know that Apple uses that kind of scheme in assigning computer names in bonjour (zeroconf)
if there are two machines on the network (mac-mini.local, mac-mini1.local etc)


> Nick
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Johan Henselmans
johan at netsense.nl