OFFLIST: Re: [LINK] RFI: MACs and PPP

[David Lochrin]

Hi Roger,

   Are you concerned about the privacy aspect re identifying a particular system, or is authentication the objective?  If you're still interested in the subject I can go on.

Cheers!
David Lochrin

-- 
On Tue, 9 Nov 2004 11:15, Roger Clarke wrote:
> 
> A dumb question about the Link Layer of the Internet Protocol Suite.
> 
> In a LAN, the physical connection between a device and the 
> communications channel is identified by a MAC (media access control) 
> address, e.g. an Ethernet NICId (network interface card identifier).
> 
> With a dial-up connection, on the other hand, there's a 1-to-1, 
> point-to-point connection rather than a 1-to-many LAN arrangement. 
> So a MAC is redundant - if you stuff the data down the line, it ends 
> up where it was meant to, because there's simply nowhere else for it 
> to go.
> 
> The question:  is there any such concept as a MAC for the modem port 
> of a device?  If not, is there any reliable identifier of the machine 
> on a dial-up connection?
> 
> (The IP-address is of course the address that the machine is at, as 
> known by the Network Layer;  it's not an identifier for the machine 
> that's sitting there at the time.  The logs contain information about 
> the IP-address and the date-and-time;  but nothing about which 
> machine was using the modem at that time).
> 

-- 
David Lochrin
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