Frank,
Are you talking about the MAC address of the entity's NIC or one generated for the entity itself?
Paul Long ipDialog, Inc.
-----Original Message----- From: Mailing list for parties associated with ITU-T Study Group 16 [mailto:ITU-SG16@mailbag.cps.INTEL.COM]On Behalf Of Frank Derks Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2001 8:29 AM To: ITU-SG16@mailbag.cps.INTEL.COM Subject: Re: Using a MAC address as the Alias
Pete,
one of the uses of a MAC address could be a "standardised" way to identify a piece of equipment in a simple way. Obviously there is a vendorIdentifier element for this purpose, but its contents are rather "non-standard" (OCTET STRING), which makes it a bit harder to determine the piece of equipment. Furthermore, I would expect the vendorIdentifier field to be identical for every product of the same type, so the only thing a could infer from this element is the type of the product and not the specific piece of equipment.
Why would I want to know the MAC address? Since the MAC address is tightly coupled to a piece of equipment, I could use this information to do something equipment specific. This can also be achieved through the vendorIdentifier element, but this would mean that any piece of equipment of this type would qualify and not a specific piece of equipment.
If I want to do something based on the physical location of the equipment, then the vendorIdentifier is no great help. If I keep some administration about the location of equipment and their MAC addresses,then I could e.g. pinpoint the location from which a call was placed.
Since Aliases usually represent users, they are rather loosely coopled to a specific piece of equipment.
Frank
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For help on this mail list, send "HELP ITU-SG16" in a message to listserv@mailbag.intel.com