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