Message-ID: <4E82A8E9.60409@lwfinger.net> (sfid-20110928_065622_732338_5A1CC0CD)
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 23:56:09 -0500
From: Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Stefan Zwanenburg <stefanhetzwaantje@gmail.com>
CC: 'Chaoming_Li' <chaoming_li@realsil.com.cn>,
	linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: =?UTF-8?B?562U5aSNOiDnrZTlpI06IOetlOWkjTogUlRMODE5MlNFIGFuZCA=?=
 =?UTF-8?B?ODAyLjExbiBwcm9ibGVt?=
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On 09/27/2011 05:25 PM, Stefan Zwanenburg wrote:
> On 09/27/2011 11:00 PM, Larry Finger wrote:
>> I have to go now, but if no one describes what we are seeing, I'll
>> review the 802.11n specs and get back to you tomorrow.
>>
>> Larry
> I've taken a quick peek at the specs, and I'm afraid I can't be of any
> help there (I found out — again — I have great respect for you guys for
> reading those documents!). However, something just dawned on me, and I'm
> not sure if it is at all relevant here, but somehow, my NIC seems to be
> getting all kinds of different MAC addresses assigned (apparently
> randomly). I just checked my "persistent net" udev rules file (mind you,
> this file is automatically amended whenever a new NIC appears on my
> system), and there are 26(!) different rules for just my wireless
> interface, all with different MAC addresses.
> As you may have noticed from my dump of the association process, the MAC
> address in use is one with a vendor ID for some "Azurewave" interface.
> There are quite a few in the rules file for Realtek interfaces, but the
> one I mostly get is for an Azurewave vendor ID.
>
> I just tried setting a different MAC address (using ifconfig wlan0 hw
> ether 00:e0:4c:81:82:58) however it didn't change anything about my no
> 802.11n link situation (as I expected). So perhaps this little tidbit
> should be ignored for now.
>
> I just thought I'd let you know, in case this isn't a known problem.

The MAC address is read from EEROM in routines found in efuse.c, and should 
always be the same. If the value read is not a valid ethernet address, then a 
random one is set, which must be what is happening on your system. I'll get back 
to you on how to dump the entire efuse contents so that we can see what else 
might be wrong in its encoding. I will be out tomorrow, thus it will likely be 
Thursday before I can answer. Perhaps Chaoming will answer earlier.

Larry