Allowing CARP to use arbitrary OUI prefix and allocating block from FreeBSD's OUI space assignment for that

[George Neville-Neil]

On 21 May 2014, at 10:58, Eygene Ryabinkin wrote:

> Mon, May 12, 2014 at 12:39:49AM +0400, Eygene Ryabinkin wrote:
>> Sun, May 11, 2014 at 04:30:32PM -0400, George Neville-Neil wrote:
>>> On May 8, 2014, at 16:04 , Gleb Smirnoff <glebius at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>>>> On Thu, May 08, 2014 at 12:10:48PM +0400, Eygene Ryabinkin wrote:
>>>> E>  - I'll do a patch for carp(4) that will allow it to use configurable
>>>> E>    OUI from a sysctl knob (first 5 bytes of OUI);
>>>>
>>>> Please no sysctl knobs. This should be configurable via ifconfig(8)
>>>> per vhid.
>>>
>>> Agree, please do this via ifconfig.
>>
>> http://codelabs.ru/fbsd/carp-ouibase.diff
>
> Updated the patch, URL remains the same:
> http://codelabs.ru/fbsd/carp-ouibase.diff
>
> Changes:
>
> - full MAC is settable via ether/lladdr/link keyword, no
>  ouibase keyword now exists;
>
> - these keywords accept "carp" and "vrrp" keywords making
>  them to set new and old bases with the last octet set to
>  the VHID;
>
> - network.subr was updated not to mess with any keywords that
>  go after 'vhid' and just pass it down to ifconfig as is.
>
> I did two days of testing and hadn't yet found any problems.

Hi,

One note on CARP and VRRP moving forwards.  I realize that this patch is partly
a CARP specific issue but a lot of people on a few mailing lists seem to have assumed
that VRRP is no longer under patent threat.

According to the FreeBSD Foundation's lawyers there are two extant patents, due
to expire in 2017, 3 years hence.  

CISCO – US6108300: Method and apparatus for transparently providing a failover network device 
IBM:  US6148410: Fault tolerant recoverable TCP/IP connection router, Baskey, Dillenberger, Goldszmidt, Hunt, Levy-Abegnoli, Nick,Schmidt, November 14, 2000.   

So let's not go assuming that VRRP is "free" just yet.

As to updating our CARP to behave correctly, that's still on the table.

Best,
George
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