Mac addresses.

[David Bryan <videoman_(_at_)_drstrangelove_(_dot_)_net>]

So here are a couple of points that I want to bring up here about why 
OpenBSD should allow one to change the MAC address on the physical 
interfaces...

1) There are a lots of people who may not have a normal ISP (EG: Broken 
Cable TV providers) out in the middle of po'dunk country, cable really 
is the only thing as dialup can fail or become a very intermittent 
connection method.
2) There is very little security gain for protecting the MAC of a 
network card, as other OSes allow the changes of MAC addresses with out 
issue.  (if everyone else didn't, then I would have to say that there 
may be validity to this. )
3) My wife just spent 3 hours on the phone with said cable company with 
out good results, this is of course for one of her clients that is 
literately in the middle of nowhere, cable internet in the best choice 
for them hands down as T1 costs are out of the companys budget.  If she 
could have changed the mac address to one that was registered 
previously she would be on her way and the client would be really 
happy!  Now she is going to have to have the client wait for the cable 
company and that means another 24-48 hours of downtime.  And the client 
will now be mad at her rather then the cable company, and in-turn she 
may have to move to a different OS...

All I am asking for is a tool to change the MAC addresses that is 
supported, and included with the base OS, either in misc or base, but 
something that does not have to be compiled and then moved to the box, 
think embedded, think remote user with no access to the box at all!    
The tools can be run before changing security levels, but it needs to 
be supported/tested with the code.

Let me know if I am way off my rocker- but in order to compete some 
features need to be added (eg: ntp, bgp, carp, etc.)

The OpenBSD developers always do a great job, Thanks so much!


-dave