Subject: rationale for using vmacs?

From: Stephen Head <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2000 09:26:08 -0700

A question arose as to the rationale for using reserved
(IANA) MAC addresses, in contrast to multicast
MAC addresses of the form 01.xx.xx.xx.xx.xx.
Any more authoritative answers than my
newcomer's guesses would be appreciated.

Steve Head
ClickArray, Inc.
[email-masked]

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From: "Danny J. Mitzel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2000 11:28:05 -0700

On Tuesday, August 08, 2000 at 09:26 PDT,

>> newcomer's guesses would be appreciated.

the VMAC is used as a source address.  I believe the group/multicast
MAC address is disallowed as a source?  even with the group/multicast
bit set the remaining bits of the OUI must be from someone valid
prefix.  see for instance appropriate RFCs on mapping from IP multicast
group addresses to IEEE MAC addresses.  these also use the IANA OUI
but with group/multicast bit set.