The Atari Jaguar Ethernet/FLASH card

[Sikor]

Great ideas!!! It must be done and it must be to buy it!!!

I want it in Poland!!!

[Matthias]

I saw your message to stone about it using ftp and having to auth etc.  perhaps using tftp would be easier to implement, with lower load?  Not as secure but you could lock it down either within the config or just to only accepting data from the same subnet.

The reverse is true: TinyFTP works, FTP doesn't (or haven't tried it, there is so much hidden in Contiki...).

 

 

Sorry,

 

i have to apologize for this answer.

I have implemented TFTP which is the Trivial FileTransferProtocol.

At least you can see now that i need help in this area.

 

Matthias

[LinkoVitch]

I saw your message to stone about it using ftp and having to auth etc.  perhaps using tftp would be easier to implement, with lower load?  Not as secure but you could lock it down either within the config or just to only accepting data from the same subnet.

The reverse is true: TinyFTP works, FTP doesn't (or haven't tried it, there is so much hidden in Contiki...).

 

 

Sorry,

 

i have to apologize for this answer.

I have implemented TFTP which is the Trivial FileTransferProtocol.

At least you can see now that i need help in this area.

 

Matthias

 

hehe.. I thought that might be what you ment when you said Tiny I thought perhaps that was the name of the client you were using or something

 

If I can help in anyway feel free to ask.

[Thunderbird]

Hey Matthias,

 

So, you finally decided to let the cat out of the bag, huh? Cool! You've got to let me know how you got around the expensive prospect of buying MAC addresses for the card. As you know, that's the part that killed my ethernet project.

 

I am sure making the cards humanly configurable wouldn't be an issue. Or perhaps giving all the cards the same MAC address (afterall are you really likley to have them all connected at once?)

 

For default just nab some low MAC addresses from the Xerox 806 vendor tag, which is listed as unregistered ( http://www.cavebear.com/CaveBear/Ethernet/vendor.html perhaps out of date)..

 

All that matters end of day is that MAC addresses not likley to conflict are used.. and I think a random stab in the dark would pretty much gurantee that nobody saw a conflict. Perhaps use NeXT MAC addresses? I doubt anyone would be using a NeXT machine for their Jag dev..

 

 

All these suggestions are doable, but also illegal in the U.S. You do what you want, but I'll continue to test my products for EM noise, and continue to register anything I make with the proper government agencies.

[Thunderbird]

Another solution discussed in c.a.e was to optain old Ethernet cards (there are plenty of 10MB cards around) and re-use the MAC address.

 

Search also comp.arch.embedded concerning the (re)use of MAC addresses.

 

I investiaged this possibility and it turns out that using a MAC address assigned to a different company is also frowned upon. Another option I thought of was for a group of people to buy a block and split them up, but the lawyers jumped upon a guy for doing just that. These guys are pretty protective of their MAC addresses.

[atarifan49]

Another solution discussed in c.a.e was to optain old Ethernet cards (there are plenty of 10MB cards around) and re-use the MAC address.

 

Search also comp.arch.embedded concerning the (re)use of MAC addresses.

 

I investiaged this possibility and it turns out that using a MAC address assigned to a different company is also frowned upon. Another option I thought of was for a group of people to buy a block and split them up, but the lawyers jumped upon a guy for doing just that. These guys are pretty protective of their MAC addresses.

 

 

It may be frowned upon but still doesn't stop me from taking the MAC address from that old ethernet card and using it on something else. As long as I don't use that card in any of my systems while I have the Jaguar ethernet adapter connected to a network.

 

So if I decide to send a dead ethernet card to the local landfill, which I own, what's to stop me from using that MAC address.

 

Another thing, my router is capable of having the MAC address changed to whatever address I want to enter. So what's the big deal about reusing MAC addresses from dead and obsolete cards?

 

Glenn

[Gorf]

I see. Have you considered some sort of USB port(2.0 latest?). That would open a wide door to Jag peripherals. Hard disks, CD-ROM/RW/DVD-ROM/RW printers keyboards mice and the list goes on. A Four Port USB would be delish!!! Is there a way to use the DSP Port as a means of connecting a USB hub?

[Thunderbird]

It may be frowned upon but still doesn't stop me from taking the MAC address from that old ethernet card and using it on something else.  As long as I don't use that card in any of my systems while I have the Jaguar ethernet adapter connected to a network.

 

So if I decide to send a dead ethernet card to the local landfill, which I own, what's to stop me from using that MAC address.

 

What's to stop you from using Grokster or Kazzaa? What's to stop you from installing one copy of Norton Antivirus on 3 PC's? Nothing.

 

You don't "own" a MAC address when you buy a card. That address is "owned" by the company who made the card. They paid for it.

 

It's common practice in some industries to monitor traffic looking for unauthorized use of MAC addresses. If I paid good money for a block of addresses, I wouldn't want anyone swiping them.

 

Another thing, my router is capable of having the MAC address changed to whatever address I want to enter.  So what's the big deal about reusing MAC addresses from dead and obsolete cards?

Glenn

 

Entering any random number you want to put in is not the reason this option is included in routers. The reason for this feature is that many DSL and Cable Modem providers tie the customer to the MAC of the card in their PC (usually one they provide) In order to use the router (which has it's own MAC address) on these systems, they have to have a way to present their traffic to the provider as if it were coming straight from the card. The provider sees the traffic from the router as if it were from the card itself. This process was known as "MAC Shadowing".

 

However, this abaility was disputed because it was circumventing the providers ability to control the number of machines connected to their system, and the router makers got a lot of backlash over the "shadowing" feature... a lot of them simply removed the shadowing feature and added an option to manually set the MAC address "for diagnostic purposes" (wink wink).

 

Keep in mind that you're not actually stealing the MAC address in this situation, because the Router actually has a MAC address on each port and is not actually "stealing" the address because it comes with one assigned to the hardware.

[Stone]

I see. Have you considered some sort of USB port(2.0 latest?). That would open a wide door to Jag peripherals. Hard disks, CD-ROM/RW/DVD-ROM/RW printers keyboards mice and the list goes on. A Four Port USB would be delish!!! Is there a way to use the DSP Port as a means of connecting a USB hub?

 

It got to the 'design evaluation' stage before being dropped. While the hardware side for a system with 2 upstream and 2 downstream ports (allowing keyb/mouse and an upload-style connection to a PC) was simple enough, it was thought there wasn't really anything in the Jag hardware could be reused to produce efficient and useful software (USB has *very* strict timing diagrams...). Using a USB-enabled microncontroller could have worked but would have ended up very expensive for not a huge market. So it was dropped...and nobody ever heard about it

 

Stone

[LinkoVitch]

Another solution discussed in c.a.e was to optain old Ethernet cards (there are plenty of 10MB cards around) and re-use the MAC address.

 

Search also comp.arch.embedded concerning the (re)use of MAC addresses.

 

I investiaged this possibility and it turns out that using a MAC address assigned to a different company is also frowned upon. Another option I thought of was for a group of people to buy a block and split them up, but the lawyers jumped upon a guy for doing just that. These guys are pretty protective of their MAC addresses.

 

The likley hood of them careing too much about a group of hobbyists occasionally using a MAC address for dead hardware that is not going to conflict with anything live is very unlikley.. Yeah if it was a big business churning out cards they would kick off. But a few hundred units made by a hobbist group and used by a very exclusive group, wouldn't be worth the legal fees, and would just make them look like idiots.

 

I doubt they would even hear of it. It's not like MAC addresses get outside of your local LAN anyway, they stop at the external router, so nobody would know unless you told them.

 

Spose one way you could get round it would be to say the cards were NOT Ethernet, they were JaggerNet or something, which by sheer fluke happens to match the Ethernet standard exactly and through sheer fluke works with Ethernet, except the MAC addresses may conflict if used as such so it is not endorsed or recomended.

 

TBird you said companies monitor MAC usage? how do they do that? random Audits of manufacturers sites or something? as I can't see it working over the internet by any stretch of the imagination.

[Thunderbird]

The likley hood of them careing too much about a group of hobbyists occasionally using a MAC address for dead hardware that is not going to conflict with anything live is very unlikley.. Yeah if it was a big business churning out cards they would kick off.  But a few hundred units made by a hobbist group and used by a very exclusive group, wouldn't be worth the legal fees, and would just make them look like idiots.

 

Because of the sheer number of "hobbiest" developers out there working from these widely available embedded ethernet designs like Matthias did, there's a huge number of bogus MAC addresses floating around out there. There's probably 2 dozen sites out there with designs for embedded ethernet schematics and software for every platform from the Amiga to the Atari 800 to the VIC-20 and everything in between. The number of people hanging fictitious MAC addresses directly on their ISP is starting to cause problems.

 

You're probably right that a card maker isn't going to bother filing a lawsuit against you for zillions of dollars, but what most people overlook is that contract they signed with their ISP for broadband ethernet. If they connect things up to their DSL or Cable Modem and it causes a conflict or anamoly at the head end, they signed a paper that says that they will pay for damages or work incurred.

 

I'd hate to have the service guy show up at my house wondering why I had a conflicting MAC address coming from my PC. Then get presented with a bill for the service call plus whatever time was spent tracking it down.

 

I carefully considered all these options before I decided not to release any of my own enbedded ethernet projects.

 

I doubt they would even hear of it.  It's not like MAC addresses get outside of your local LAN anyway, they stop at the external router, so nobody would know unless you told them.

 

My guess is that people are going to want to network games across the internet, like XBOX Live or something along those lines. Unfortunately, getting routers to work and "play nice" with all hardware is a pipe dream (look at all the "router troubleshooting" that goes on over on the XBOX Live and the PS2 networking websites.) These cheap home routers are seriously messed up and tend not to work well.

 

I will venture a guess that there are folks out there who will buy a router and it won't work, so they will just glom directly to their provider's ethernet port and start blasting away.

 

Other people will balk at spending an additional >$50 for a router and will opt for a <$19 switch or a <$10 hub instead.

 

Other folks will not understand the subtleties involved in setting up a router and will opt for the switches or hubs instead, since they don't need any configurations.

 

 

Spose one way you could get round it would be to say the cards were NOT Ethernet, they were JaggerNet or something, which by sheer fluke happens to match the Ethernet standard exactly and through sheer fluke works with Ethernet, except the MAC addresses may conflict if used as such so it is not endorsed or recomended.

 

That works, as long as you're planning on never networking across the internet, which is the major reason for using Ethernet in the first place. The second you connect an incompatible protocol to the internet, you are in violation. There's already about 5 options available for people to set up a local network in their home and play networked games. Another option for doing the same thing is probably moot.

 

TBird you said companies monitor MAC usage?  how do they do that? random Audits of manufacturers sites or something? as I can't see it working over the internet by any stretch of the imagination.

 

Some of them use spyware to do it, some of them use features of their drivers to look for strange things, others have methods which I can't discuss. Remember, there is a pretty big market out there right now for building counterfeit ethernet hardware and selling them as if they were from a reliable company. This is the kind of thing that has most manufacturers all worked up and snooping around.

[LinkoVitch]

I think you have a few misconceptions here...

 

The likley hood of them careing too much about a group of hobbyists occasionally using a MAC address for dead hardware that is not going to conflict with anything live is very unlikley.. Yeah if it was a big business churning out cards they would kick off. But a few hundred units made by a hobbist group and used by a very exclusive group' date=' wouldn't be worth the legal fees, and would just make them look like idiots.[/quote']

 

Because of the sheer number of "hobbiest" developers out there working from these widely available embedded ethernet designs like Matthias did, there's a huge number of bogus MAC addresses floating around out there. There's probably 2 dozen sites out there with designs for embedded ethernet schematics and software for every platform from the Amiga to the Atari 800 to the VIC-20 and everything in between. The number of people hanging fictitious MAC addresses directly on their ISP is starting to cause problems.

 

Your ISP doesn't deal with your mac address. Sure some register machines VIA their mac address but EtherNet is not designed to run long distance hence why it is a LAN and not WAN protocol. With moder technology you can get Ethernet further, but the same limits apply to it (number of repeaters before it gets flakey and you mess up the CSMA/CD due to excessive latency. It is most likley that your cable modem uses some other either proprietay protocol or possibly something like ATM to xfer data along with the TV data streams.

 

Even PPP doesn't transmit EThernet frames, that would be insaine. The MAC address is only used within an Ethernet Segment, it would be too expensive to route MAC addresses across the internet.. hell most of the internet interconnects if not all are NOT Ethernet so MAC addresses don't even apply.

 

You're probably right that a card maker isn't going to bother filing a lawsuit against you for zillions of dollars' date=' but what most people overlook is that contract they signed with their ISP for broadband ethernet. If they connect things up to their DSL or Cable Modem and it causes a conflict or anamoly at the head end, they signed a paper that says that they will pay for damages or work incurred.[/quote']

 

Not going to happen. When you get a connection from an ISP you get a TCP/IP connection. What protocol you run inside your own network is no concern of theirs. You buy a connection from them which could be presented via Dialup, DSL, or Leased Line, (or if your rich DS3, STM, OC, POS). None of these network protocols use EtherNet MAC addresses, all they do is provide transport for your TCP/IP data. So the ISP doesn't know or care what MAC addresses are on your network. Hell you may not even be using EtherNet, you could have ATM, Banyan, Token Ring. You think an ISP cares? they don't trust me I have worked for one since 1997.

 

I'd hate to have the service guy show up at my house wondering why I had a conflicting MAC address coming from my PC. Then get presented with a bill for the service call plus whatever time was spent tracking it down.

 

Wouldn't happen unless you were getting your connection either direct from some backbone direct and then you should be using a router to sit infront of your network. Plus this tends to be VERY expensive and only availible within the confines of an FM site' date=' which is not going to have some Jag deveoper sat in one of it's machine rooms with his Flash cart writing code. If such a situation did arrise the first swicth to spot the MAC duplication would make a decision on which to keep and ignore the other, so it would most likley keep the one that has been there the longest.

 

I carefully considered all these options before I decided not to release any of my own enbedded ethernet projects.

 

You may as well release them

 

I will venture a guess that there are folks out there who will buy a router and it won't work' date=' so they will just glom directly to their provider's ethernet port and start blasting away. [/quote']

 

Nothing wrong with that. just limits their home network setup.. I myself am running a network behind a Linux box acting as router, work find appart from some games which I have to setup PAT for.

 

Other people will balk at spending an additional >$50 for a router and will opt for a <$19 switch or a <$10 hub instead.

 

Other folks will not understand the subtleties involved in setting up a router and will opt for the switches or hubs instead' date=' since they don't need any configurations.

[/quote']

 

These are not likley to work too well, depending on the ISP. my provider drops the connection as soon as the STB sees another MAC address. As a security measure you have to register your machines MAC address (the one connected to the STB) to prove you are the person who is paying for the service.. you register MAC address with your username and password. So in my case it's the MAC of my router.. it never sees any other machines MAC as it is on a different segment of my local LAN.

 

I would guess most providers do this so they don't get hammered with people network traffic. I would certainly get upset if someone stuck a hub on my network, plus it would be very inefficient due to all the broadcasts.

 

TBird you said companies monitor MAC usage? how do they do that? random Audits of manufacturers sites or something? as I can't see it working over the internet by any stretch of the imagination.

 

Some of them use spyware to do it' date=' some of them use features of their drivers to look for strange things, others have methods which I can't discuss. Remember, there is a pretty big market out there right now for building counterfeit ethernet hardware and selling them as if they were from a reliable company. This is the kind of thing that has most manufacturers all worked up and snooping around.[/quote']

 

I find that hard to believe. I am pretty sure there would be an uproar from providers and companies if their ethernet devices talked about other Ethernet devices that they could see. It would be a big security hole, and eat up a lot of bandwidth for larger networks. You can try this yourself setup a machine snooping it's interface and connect it to a hub (not a switch, so you can see all traffic not just broadcasts), now connect several machines to that and turn em on, all you will see is ARP traffic as the machines announce themselves on the networks. and any MS NetBIOS rubbish if you happen to run it or NetBEUI on the machines.. But you won't (shouldn't) see any traffic from the interfaces themselves, after all they don't know anything beyond Ethernet, so they cannot send out Net Happy packets.

 

Hope this has cleared up a few points there. sorry it's so long winded

 

I suggest you look at some books on routing.. I recommend "Routing in the Internet" by Christian Huitema. It's a bit old, but an EXCELLENT read, explains everything clearly. "Data and Computer COmmunications" by William Stallings is also another great book, whcih coveres the basics of Ethernet and CSMA/CD

 

have fun

[Matthias]

Hello!

 

I see. Have you considered some sort of USB port(2.0 latest?). That would open a wide door to Jag peripherals. Hard disks, CD-ROM/RW/DVD-ROM/RW printers keyboards mice and the list goes on. A Four Port USB would be delish!!! Is there a way to use the DSP Port as a means of connecting a USB hub?

 

Stone gave the right answers, but i want to add that all these "potential" USB-devices would also need special drivers. And who should write all these drivers?

 

Matthias

[Thunderbird]

I think you have a few misconceptions here....

 

Thanks for telling someone in the networking business how he doesn't know anything about his job.

 

Your ISP doesn't deal with your mac address. Sure some register machines VIA their mac address but EtherNet is not designed to run long distance hence why it is a LAN and not WAN protocol.

 

I guess they haven't managed to get broadband figured out where you live yet. When they do' date=' you can study up on it and then come back and try to insult my intelligence. The MAC level is used across many broadband providers to limit the machines on a subscriber's line. We don't want some clown in an apartment complex wiring his whole building onto one cable modem line, now do we?

 

Even PPP doesn't transmit EThernet frames, that would be insaine.

 

Anyone using PPP in the first place is living in the stoneage (no offence, Stone).

 

Not going to happen. When you get a connection from an ISP you get a TCP/IP connection. What protocol you run inside your own network is no concern of theirs. You buy a connection from them which could be presented via Dialup, DSL, or Leased Line, (or if your rich DS3, STM, OC, POS). None of these network protocols use EtherNet MAC addresses, all they do is provide transport for your TCP/IP data. So the ISP doesn't know or care what MAC addresses are on your network.

 

How many times do I have to explain the same concept to you before you get off your high-horse and admit that you are spouting nonsensical technobabble to get yourself out of a bind. This isn't an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, or a Tom Baker Dr. Who here... buzzwords can't get around the fact that MAC addresses matter.

 

Hell you may not even be using EtherNet, you could have ATM, Banyan, Token Ring. You think an ISP cares? they don't trust me I have worked for one since 1997.

 

I guess you guys haven't figured out that bandwidth piracy is a problem and/or that there are ways to track and prevent it. Maybe over there you have only honest people who don't steal things. I might have bought that except you were the one suggesting numerous ways that a person could nick a MAC address from the rightful owner and how to cover your tracks.

 

ISP's care.

 

Wouldn't happen unless you were getting your connection either direct from some backbone direct and then you should be using a router to sit infront of your network. Plus this tends to be VERY expensive and only availible within the confines of an FM site, which is not going to have some Jag deveoper sat in one of it's machine rooms with his Flash cart writing code. If such a situation did arrise the first swicth to spot the MAC duplication would make a decision on which to keep and ignore the other, so it would most likley keep the one that has been there the longest.

 

It would also send out a little message telling the head end the branch where the duplicate MAC was found, and then that particilar node would be carefully investigated for other strange activity. If it persisted, the guys with the little vans with the ladders would be dispatched and they would look closely on the wires up on the pole, find your house and knock on the door.

 

The very reason MAC level addressing is maintained on these types of networks is to be able to track down pirates and bandwidth theives.

 

You may as well release them

 

I don't think that many people in the Jag community are prepared to pay the price it would cost to make such a project. I've already seen posts here telling Matthias his board must cost $80!

 

The X-Box could plug right into the DSL ethernet port, but this would then limit you to using just the X-Box on your DSL..

 

That's what most people wind up doing because the cheapo routers people are buying don't work right and wind up dropping people when the games are started, etc. Look at all the problems caused by cheap routers and think about it for a second.

 

Nothing wrong with that. just limits their home network setup.. I myself am running a network behind a Linux box acting as router, work find appart from some games which I have to setup PAT for.

 

Not every person trying to play Ethernet JagDOOM is going to have the ability to set up such a robust system.

 

No, doen't work like that.

 

It works EXACTLY like that from the perspective of my provider. I absolutely cannot send any protocols I make up through my provider to anyone else on the provider or on the internet. Period. You're looking at this the wrong way. This is not a top-down architecture. We need to send information from one Jaguar to another over the internet to play networked games, it it will absolutely not work if we invent our own protocols. Even if it did work today, there's no guarantee it would continue to operate as the provider altered their security or upgraded their infrastructure.

 

Don't even bother trying to lecture me on TCP/IP either. I've forgotten more about TCP/IP than you'll ever know. Come back the day you write your own TCP stack from scratch.

 

I find that hard to believe. I am pretty sure there would be an uproar from providers and companies if their ethernet devices talked about other Ethernet devices that they could see. It would be a big security hole, and eat up a lot of bandwidth for larger networks.

 

There you go again looking at things fro mthe wrong perspective. You're obviously not a hardware vendor and have never had to protect your intellectual property from pirates and theives. A little 32-byte message from a bit of spyware is NOT going to even show up on the radar. You've got 100dB of noise coming from all the SPAM traffic on the networks to filter out before you can even see these messages, and even then they usually pack the information into innocuous packets where the unwashed masses (you) trying to find them will never see them. Even wonder what DHCP OPTIONS are for? What about the unused padding bytes?

 

Lose the knowitall attitude and open your eyes to the things going on around you. If you still feel like you have outsmarted the universe after that, you can come back again and try to insult me.

 

Thanks for the entertainment!

[LinkoVitch]

I think you have a few misconceptions here....

 

Thanks for telling someone in the networking business how he doesn't know anything about his job.

 

 

I could say the same thing

 

It would also send out a little message telling the head end the branch where the duplicate MAC was found' date=' and then that particilar node would be carefully investigated for other strange activity. If it persisted, the guys with the little vans with the ladders would be dispatched and they would look closely on the wires up on the pole, find your house and knock on the door.

 

The very reason MAC level addressing is maintained on these types of networks is to be able to track down pirates and bandwidth theives.[/quote']

 

Pray tell how is an EtherNet adaptor going to know default routes and gateways? Also alarm bells would be setoff by all these strange packets bouncing off firewalls. The STB could in effect report (and I know it does) all connections to it from diff mac addresses, and only permits those from registered addresses.. this is just a security measure it has nothing to do with routing.

 

Don't even bother trying to lecture me on TCP/IP either. I've forgotten more about TCP/IP than you'll ever know. Come back the day you write your own TCP stack from scratch.

 

Shame you didn't find out about routing and other protocols whilst you were at it. A real achievement would be if you developed the protocol from scratch. following RFC blueprints isn't exactly hard now is it.. thats the point of them

 

I'll let you know when I have finished my own stack.. it's down at the bottom of the list there is more pressing things I would rather work on' date=' that don't have such a readly availible blueprint availible

 

There you go again looking at things fro mthe wrong perspective. You're obviously not a hardware vendor and have never had to protect your intellectual property from pirates and theives. A little 32-byte message from a bit of spyware is NOT going to even show up on the radar. You've got 100dB of noise coming from all the SPAM traffic on the networks to filter out before you can even see these messages, and even then they usually pack the information into innocuous packets where the unwashed masses (you) trying to find them will never see them. Even wonder what DHCP OPTIONS are for? What about the unused padding bytes?

 

Hmmm fun how firewalls don't pickup these mystcial packets. DHCP is just broadcast within the local segment how the hell does this get back to the manu's? magic? or is it some new form of Etherial tunneling? On a small network such an occurance may go un-noticed, on a large scale network you would see it, you would hear about it from firewalls. and there would no doubt be security exploits using it.

 

It would be kind of obvious all your machines trying to send out small packets to a few hosts.. owned by the vendors of the cards. Plus think of the tarffic these boxes would have to take on a daily basis.. bandwidth isn't cheap.. I am sure they would rather let a few MAC's be reused than foot a bill to see all the legitimate ones being used.

 

padding bits/bytes.. they will be to keep the packet size to the minimum 64 bytes for an IP packet. same as ICMP pings. and as I said.. it wouldn't leave the local segment, the switching and routing hardware would stop them. Otherwise don't you think pinging 255.255.255.255 would drop you off the net pretty damn quickly?

 

Lose the knowitall attitude and open your eyes to the things going on around you. If you still feel like you have outsmarted the universe after that' date=' you can come back again and try to insult me.

 

Thanks for the entertainment![/quote']

 

I think the only person here with a knowitall attitude is yourself TBird. I don't think I have outsmarted the universe. Just repeated what I have learned through working with a large scale network in the ISP field. And also whilst writing my final year project which similuated the operation of a network built in computers RAM .

 

Perhaps when you accept you DON'T know everything about everyting and that nobody actually can. Also that other people are right at time too.. perhaps then you will learn something new.

 

Sorry you feel like I was insulting you, no insult was ment. Like you have said before.. when you see someone saying something wrong you correct them.. that is all I was doing.

[Thunderbird]

I could say the same thing

 

No you couldn't. You were the first and only one using misconceptions and doubletalk to explain his misconceptions and doubltalk.

 

Yes, they use it as a method of authentication.  It is not used to transmit data.  EtherNet is a LAN protocol not a WAN protocol.  ATM is best suited for multiplexing data and video streams.

 

They could transmit the data over a string with 2 cans tied on the end and it wouldn't make a difference. The point is that the MAC address is known to the provider and used by them.

 

There goes your whole argument that the MAC is not important and we can just pull MAC addresses out of our buttocks and type them in and away we go.

 

I am NOT spouting nonsensical technobalbble.. Ethernet is for LAN's  you DON'T use Ethernet for Transit, it wastes bandwidth..

 

The problem with you is you think everyone else is so ignorant of the internet that they MUST be talking about something stupid and going by that assumption you correct things they don't even talk about with a bunch of acronyms and buzzwords that are not germaine to the conversation. We're not talking about the backbone here, we're talking about the ability for a MAC address to be known by someone other than you. By whatever means necessary. You seem to think that there's someone out there thinking that they can take an old linux PC and some alligator clips and tap into the internet backbone and sniff your traffic. That's not what we're talking about here, so stop insisting that's what it is.

 

Pray tell how is an EtherNet adaptor going to know default routes and gateways?

 

It doesn't need to know these things. The fact you think that anyone said they do is baffling. You're talking about some totally different subject now.

 

He actualy hoped it would be around $80.  if the products are worthwhile I am sure people would be wiling to pay the necissary amount.

 

Some will, others will squeal like stuck pigs because they can get a whole MP3 player with 256MB of flash for less money, blah, blah, blah. This sort of thing can really take the motivation away from the Jag developer...

 

So when the next version of Quake comes out you will have to wait for them to upgrade their infrastructure?  NO.. becuase you will be sending TCP/IP packets.  NOT EtherNet or QuakeNet packets to them.  If Matthais's cart uses EtherNet but calls it something different, as long as the IMplementation of TCP/IP over Ethernet is the same it will work regardless.  I was just saying  CALL it something else not actually make up a new protocol.

 

That would work. I would never do something that underhanded myself. It's like using a HEX editor to change all the titles in a program to your own text and then giving it away as "freeware" by saying it's a different program.

 

Shame you didn't find out about routing and other protocols whilst you were at it.  A real achievement would be if you developed the protocol from scratch.  following RFC blueprints isn't exactly hard now is it.. thats the point of them

 

If it's so easy, a super genius like you should be able to do it. Oh. Don't forget, you have to write it in assembly language and it has to fit in 4K of RAM. Go ahead. Try it! It will be a fun thing you can do while you're not curing SARS and fixing the Space Shuttle.

 

I'll let you know when I have finished my own stack.. it's down at the bottom of the list there is more pressing things I would rather work on, that don't have such a readly availible blueprint availible

 

I won't hold my breath.

 

Hmmm fun how firewalls don't pickup these mystcial packets.

 

Last time I checked, firewalls configured to pass through IP packets will pass them through.

 

It would be kind of obvious all your machines trying to send out small packets to a few hosts.. owned by the vendors of the cards.

 

Who said that the ethernet cards were supposed to be reporting their individual status on a daily basis??? The drivers I saw only reported on exceptions, which in the case of a perfectly normal system with legal MAC addresses you would never EVER see. Sort of defeats the purpose of spyware if it constantly revealed itself to you.

 

I think the only person here with a knowitall attitude is yourself TBird.  I don't think I have outsmarted the universe.

 

Stop trying to steal my name, and stop talking to yourself!

[LinkoVitch]

I could say the same thing

 

No you couldn't. You were the first and only one using misconceptions and doubletalk to explain his misconceptions and doubltalk.

 

I have no misconceptions' date=' and am NOT using double talk, I am trying to give real world examples of why MAC addresses can be made up in a LAN without any major problem.

 

That would work. I would never do something that underhanded myself. It's like using a HEX editor to change all the titles in a program to your own text and then giving it away as "freeware" by saying it's a different program.

 

It's not quite the same as that. but in a dog eat dog world' date=' underhandedness can be handy. Although I doubt there will be an issue with it being called EtherNet.

 

I think the only person here with a knowitall attitude is yourself TBird. I don't think I have outsmarted the universe.

 

Stop trying to steal my name' date=' and stop talking to yourself![/quote']

 

I wouldn't dream of stealing your name, if I were in the name stealing business I would steal a better one. As for talking to myself, I'll leave that to you and your playground chums.

[Thunderbird]

I have no misconceptions' date=' and am NOT using double talk, I am trying to give real world examples of why MAC addresses can be made up in a LAN without any major problem.

 

If I said that I was giving a real world example of how I can hop into any car I see in a parking lot and drive off with it and this would not be a problem, would you not think I had a misconception.

 

Saying it's okay to steal a MAC address is dishonest and unlawful, and saying it's not a problem is the same thing.

 

It is used by the provider for authentication and security only, NOT traffic routing. The MAC stops at the STB (I'll expand that so you don't get confused. "Set Top Box" or "Cable Modem" depends on when you bought your account). The actual IP traffic is sent over whatever network is connected to the STB, which I am guessing is going to be something like ATM as that is what it was designed for. You can fire ATM over pretty much any medium you like, it's a protocol not a hardware link.

 

Not everyone chooses to use the exact same topology as you prescribe. I know of several cable systems which use MAC level addressing all the way out to the fiber cables on the major highways. Entire Subdevelopments use MAC addressing. An interesting side effect of this is that homes within the same branch have extremely low latency connections and network games are extremely fast.

 

But this is way off the subject.

 

No I am not spouting technobable. The list of protocols was to illustrate that there is more than just EtherNet used, and as MAC addresses in this discussion are for EtherNet hardware, their propigation stops at the end of the EtherNet segment. Now as these various segments all over the world are linked by lots of other protocols that don't use the EtherNet MAC address, there is no way it is going to conflict with someone elses hardware unless they are on YOUR LAN in YOUR segment.

 

This is ALSO off the subject.

 

NO, I am talking about what you said about spyware reporting back. To report information back it will have to be encapsulated in IP and know a route out of the network. It cannot simply drop an EnterNet Frame home.

 

I get it now. You're feigning ignorance to get me to tell you the specifics of how it's being done. Hoping to ruffle my feathers in order to agitate me into giving out a nugget or detail you can use for your own nefarious purposes.

 

I notice you snipped the bit about DHCP padding bits and options being used to secretly report back MAC information. Admitting a mistake there are we?

 

You keep jumping all over every example I give, trying to tear things apart and prove your case. In case you didn't notice, I'm being purposely vague because I am trying to be careful not to give away any trade secrets. DHCP is just one example of a method which a packet can contain manufacturer specific data and would NOT be seen as a bogus packet or filtered out like you seem to think would happen. It's not the only method out there by a longshot.

 

Try as you might, I'm not going to slip anything out that would endanger the people I work for, so you can knock off the charade.

 

So these spyware packets are some other type of packet.. something that the firewall will just let through regardless.

 

Hint: The packets might or might not actually be something that you actually think you should be sending. (wink wink) This is a no-brainer.

 

I think you will find that a firewall also stops IP packets it's not configured to let through. So a firewall with only port 80 open on it, is going to let through these spyware packets? not likley, more likley it will stop then and even possibly record the fact it stopped them.

 

Hey... you forgot that a firewall with NO PORTS open would probably stop them as well, but then again it wouldn't of much use then would it?

 

I am also guessing you think this spyware lives in the drivers for the card? So what happens when the drivers arn't written by the manu? Microsoft (I know not trust worthy, but I bet they couldn't really care), Sun, Some hacker who has just written drivers for Linux?

 

I know exactly where the spyware lives. The point here is that some hacker that writes his own device drivers is not going to make up a huge segment of the target. The target in this situation is the guy in Korea who makes a phoney copy of a name-brand NIC and then sells it on the market to unsuspecting consumers who promptly install the card and go grab the device drivers that are conveniently provided on the (legitimate) manufacturer's website. (Or on the pirated CD that the guy in Korea had duped from the legitimate CD, which is usually not the case because they like to omit the driver CD and sell just the card for more profit)

 

but if it did see something it didn't like.. it would see it on a daily basis. so report daily. But then we are debating something that isn't inplace, so no real point guessing what they could or couldn't do.

 

You should make a new avatar only showing that guy with his fingers in his ears and humming loudly to himself.

[+Sauron]

Why am I not surprised that someone had to take a crap on this thread too? It's no secret why a perpetual black cloud lingers over the Jag community...

[Thunderbird]

first and only one using misconceptions and doubletalk to explain his misconceptions and doubltalk.

 

Why don't you answer these simple questions for everyone to see:

 

1) Why do manufacturers have to BUY registered Ethernet MAC addresses when any random number will do?

 

2) Are there people in the world with more knowlege of internet topology than yourself.

 

3) Are there people in the world with more knowlege of Ethernet protocols and drivers than yourself?

 

4) Are there programmers in the world any more devious than yourself?

 

5) Are there companies in the world with any reason for protecting themselves against fraudulent use of their assigned registered MAC addresses?

 

6) Is there ANY reason you can think of that a company would want to know the MAC addresses of devices on the network they run?

 

7) Is there ANY reason you can think of why a company would configure its network to prevent the MIS people from knowing the MAC addresses of devices on their own network?

[Albert]

Okay guys, Matthias has created a great little piece of hardware for the Atari Jaguar and you guys are arguing about MAC addresses?

 

First, just how many of these things might actually make it into the wild? 100? 200? 300? A miniscule percentage of hardware out there that has MAC addresses. Second, most of these carts will be used on local networks and will never be attached to anything beyond that. Third, even if a few of these *ARE* used to play games/surf over the internet, at worst the MAC address may be used, what, in an entire subdevelopment? What are the odds of someone actually colliding with another MAC address in that (worst case scenario) subdevelopment? I'd say they're pretty damn slim and certainly not worth arguing about.

 

..Al

[LinkoVitch]

Sorry guys I will stop with the MAC address stuff. I am just sorry that TBird refuses to accept that he can be wrong. Perhaps he should answer his own group of questions.

 

End of the day what do I care what he believes I know what I know. SOrry for blowing the thread to pieces with this nonsense I'll stop now. If TBird wants to continue he can start another thread or PM me.

 

@mattias. Sorry for going off topic with your thread I can't wait for your final release. When you said that the upload speed to the cart is approx 50% of the speed of BJL. what is the limiting factor there? Is it the speed of the flash chips? or the speed of the Jag itself that limits the throughput?

[Stone]

@matthias.  Sorry for going off topic with your thread  I can't wait for your final release.  When you said that the upload speed to the cart is approx 50% of the speed of BJL.  what is the limiting factor there?  Is it the speed of the flash chips? or the speed of the Jag itself that limits the throughput?

 

This was mentioned, but seemed to be lost in the 'background noise' The Jag needs to ack each packet sent seperately, and the packets are small so this limits the overall speed. If you used bigger packets it would be faster...

 

I'm not sure if the ack also includes a per-packet checksumming procedure, but the standard BJL setup only does this once (after the upload - each byte written is added to a 'running total' on both sides of the connection, which are compared at the end) so I'm sure you could get away with a less-solid transfer mechanism for a decent speed increase.

 

Stone

[LinkoVitch]

@matthias.  Sorry for going off topic with your thread  I can't wait for your final release.  When you said that the upload speed to the cart is approx 50% of the speed of BJL.  what is the limiting factor there?  Is it the speed of the flash chips? or the speed of the Jag itself that limits the throughput?

 

This was mentioned, but seemed to be lost in the 'background noise' The Jag needs to ack each packet sent seperately, and the packets are small so this limits the overall speed. If you used bigger packets it would be faster...

 

I'm not sure if the ack also includes a per-packet checksumming procedure, but the standard BJL setup only does this once (after the upload - each byte written is added to a 'running total' on both sides of the connection, which are compared at the end) so I'm sure you could get away with a less-solid transfer mechanism for a decent speed increase.

 

Stone

 

Righty. Yeah probably worth getting it all working hunky dorey first and then wory about the speed later OO it's all exciting

[Matthias]

Hello!

 

@matthias.  Sorry for going off topic with your thread  I can't wait for your final release.  When you said that the upload speed to the cart is approx 50% of the speed of BJL.  what is the limiting factor there?  Is it the speed of the flash chips? or the speed of the Jag itself that limits the throughput?

 

This was mentioned, but seemed to be lost in the 'background noise' The Jag needs to ack each packet sent seperately, and the packets are small so this limits the overall speed. If you used bigger packets it would be faster...

 

I'm not sure if the ack also includes a per-packet checksumming procedure, but the standard BJL setup only does this once (after the upload - each byte written is added to a 'running total' on both sides of the connection, which are compared at the end) so I'm sure you could get away with a less-solid transfer mechanism for a decent speed increase.

 

Stone

 

My "benchmark" was done with the TrivialFTP. This means that you probably can speed up the ethernet-based transfer if you would use specialized programs on both sides (PC and Jaguar).

 

And i did the tests with JAG-files like Native (~1MB): a RAM-only transfer.

Of course erasing the FLASH-ROMs need additional time, but i hope that there is no big slow-down when burning the data.

 

Regards

Matthias