Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Are we running out of MAC addresses?

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313326_6812I was recently speaking with a colleague in Germany who was commenting about the recent request for public comment around the OUI Restructuring proposed by the IEEE RAC. You can find all the details in the draft document along with this presentation.

Unlike IPv4 addresses which are 32-bits long, the Ethernet MAC address is 48-bits in length and can provide a total of  281.5 trillion possible addresses. The first 3 bytes (24-bits) are reserved for identifying the vendor or manufacturer while the remaining 3 bytes (24-bits) are used to provide unique addresses to each device. As it exists today you could have 16.7 million unique addresses across 16.7 million unique vendors and/or manufacturers.

What devices have MAC address assigned;

  • Hardwired Network Adapters
  • Wireless Network Adapters
  • Bluetooth Adapters

You can find a MAC address in any of the following devices;

  • Smartphone
  • Tablet
  • Laptop/Desktop
  • Server
  • Virtual Server
  • Printer
  • Cable STB (Set-Top-Box)
  • Cable Router
  • Wireless Router
  • DVD/BlueRay player
  • Bluetooth Headset
  • IP Phone
  • IP Camera
  • Video Conference System
  • Switch/Router/Bridge
  • Wireless Access Point

The IEEE is proposing a change with how those addresses are allocated to help better utilize wasted address space as well as address virtualization challenges by creating large private address blocks for use within large virtualization deployments.

While a public IPv4 address needs to be unique across the entire Internet, a MAC address only needs to be unique across a Layer 2 network. It’s also worth noting that Layer 3 switches can have a unique MAC address for every port, so if you have a Layer 3 switch such as the Cisco Nexus 7010 or the Avaya VSP 9000 with 384 ports you’ll have 384 unique MAC addresses in that switch.

I downloaded the latest OUI table and counted about 17,597 assignments which means we have quite a ways to go before we exhaust the address space. I don’t see any issue with the proposed changes but I’m curious what everyone else thinks?

Cheers!

References;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

Verizon FiOS TV to utilize MPEG-4 H.264

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Verizon FiOS TV will start utilizing MPEG-4 (H.264) to encode some of their channels beginning sometime after April 15, 2013. The use of MPEG-4 isn’t completely new to Verizon FiOS TV, last year around April 2012 they started carrying all the MLB Extra Innings channels along with a few other premium channels in MPEG-4, this year they are expanding the number of channels they are encoding in MPEG-4 so a larger number of their customers will be impacted.

It’s my current understanding that if you have a QIP-6200 or QIP-6416 STB that you’ll need a replacement assuming you have a package that allows access to any of the channels mentioned below.

VerizonSTB-MPG4-all

You can check whether or not you need to order a replacement by going through the STB menus, Menu -> Customer Support -> Set Top Box Exchange.

Cheers!

Holiday Gadgets and Recycling

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There were more than a few new gadgets brought into the house over the holidays.

AcerAspireMy 12 year old daughter received a new Acer Aspire 15.6″ (Intel Core i3, 4GB, 640GB HDD) notebook. Thankfully the notebook came preloaded with Windows 7 (and not Windows 8). It took me about 2 hours to remove the bloatware, and install some relevant software such as Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, Libre Office, GIMP and Kaspersky Internet Security. The big application on the laptop was ooVoo, a free video chat and instant messaging application. It was an instant hit with all my daughter’s friends, she even got her grandfather (my dad) to install it on his computer so he could video chat with her.

GoogleNexus7While my 12 year daughter already had a Kindle Fire from last year, both my 8 year old twins each received a Google Nexus 7 tablet. I’ve lost count how many times they’ve watched The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride on the Nexus 7. If you’re looking for an easy tool to convert your online digital movie library I would suggest you look at Freemake. The Freemake Video Converter provides an easy way to convert a ripped DVD to different form factors (screen size) and media formats. I provided the twins each with a Google Play card so they could purchase some apps without me having to enter my credit card into their Google accounts. The big application on the Google Nexus 7 has been Minecraft. A game which I can honestly say I know very little about.

GoogleChromeBookI will say that I have had to impose some parental usage rules for all of the girls, they were spending an exorbitant amount of time on their tablets and laptops.

I ended up with a Google Samsung Chromebook which I’ve been slowly warming up to. The form factor is awesome, the battery life is decent and the keyboard is fairly nice but I’ve been struggling with selecting text to cut and paste between different applications and web sites. I’ve done some research but I’m still coming up short. How do you select text on the Chromebook without a mouse button?

I’ve been slowly adopting Evernote as my one place to write down all the little ideas crawling around inside my head. It was working well enough that I upgraded to Evernote Premium after only a  few days of registering.

23998-video_games_planetside_2_wallpaperLife can’t be all work and no play so I spent some time playing Planetside 2 over the holidays. Planetside 2 is a massive multiplayer online (MMO) FPS (first person shooter) game distributed by Sony Online Entertainment. It’s actually free to play for anyone. The game puts an incredible load on even the most recent PC hardware. The game was stretching my aging PC to the breaking point turning in 10-15 FPS in-game so I took my Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 running at 2.83Ghz that I overclocked the CPU to 3.2Ghz, a fairly easy task with the 45nm Intel Q9550 and the Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard. The MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II OC Radeon HD 6950 video card is already overclocked from the factory so there isn’t much more I can do to help prop up the performance.

There’s something to be said about playing on a server with more than one thousand other players, it really adds to the Planetside 2 tagline of Size Always Matters.

682528_48185390Recycling

Every year around the holidays I end up warning friends about safely disposing their old smartphones and personal computers. This year there’s a new twist in that recommendation – did you know that it’s now illegal to throw that old smartphone or personal computer in the trash in Pennsylvania?

The Pennsylvania Covered Device Recycling Act, enacted in 2010, requires that consumers cannot dispose of certain electronics devices in the trash, but that these items must instead be brought to a recycling location.

The law went into effect last week January 24, 2013 so you are now required to recycle that old electronic device in Pennsylvania.

You can find additional information including recycling drop-off locations on the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection website. I’ve personally recycled old monitors, computers and other e-waste at Best Buy, so that might be an easy option depending on where you live.

Cheers!

 

Verizon FiOS and Customer Support

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VerizonActiontecGen3I’m a Verizon FiOS Internet and TV (and Verizon Wireless) customer. I’ve been using Verizon FiOS Internet since 2006 and Verizon FiOS TV since 2008 here in the Philadelphia suburbs. I’m happy to say that I’ve been very pleased with the service – even though the prices have gone up significantly since my original post in 2008. You actually get an Internet connection with 25Mbps up and 25Mbps down and the picture quality of their High Definition channels is superb.

Over the past two months I started experiencing intermittent connectivity problems with my Verizon FiOS Internet service. I noticed that I would loose all Internet access once sometimes twice a night during the evenings. The service would drop out for usually 2-3 minutes at a time although on January 5th it dropped out for about 15-20 minutes right in the middle of a gaming session with some friends while playing Planetside 2.

VerizonSupportTweetI posted to Twitter that I was having difficulty with my Verizon FiOS Internet service and @VerizonSupport replied to my tweet. Yes, they actually replied to my tweet!

Long story short they asked me to fill out a very short web form and two days later they shipped a replacement Verizon Wireless Router (BHR) – thanks Adam! I installed the replacement router last night and so far so good.

Let me commend Verizon for their use of social networking… fantastic way to connect with their users and cut through all the red tape.

I’m another very satisfied Verizon FiOS customer!

Cheers!

Comment Spam

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Over the past three months I’ve seen a 200% increase in comment spam to this blog. The numbers are staggering when you start to think about all the wasted resources.

Akismet-Stats-Jan2013

There were some 47,722 spam comments or trackbacks on this blog in December 2012 detected and blocked by Akismet. There were only 44,640 minutes in the month of December so that means that there was more than 1 spam comment or trackback every minute for the month of December 2012. Think of all the wasted bandwidth, disk space, processing time, etc and it quickly starts to add up when look at the scale of it. I can still remember receiving my first comment and thinking wasn’t that nice of them “Great Blog!” only to realize after a few minutes that comment was intended to just showcase the URL link in the comment.

I’ve posted before about the problem of spam comments in December 2010. Unfortunately since I’m no longer using Apache the .htaccess files that I had setup then no longer work not saying that was a good solution but it was something at least. I’m curious what everyone else is doing? Is anyone blacklisting certain countries? I know from experience that won’t solve the problem, although it might help slow it a little.

Cheers!

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