Duplicate MAC address on 2 T60s with Verizon WWAN

[moore101]

Has anyone else noticed that some T60's have identical MAC addresses for the internal Verizon WWAN cards? Our company purchases all our notebooks with the WWAN and we only noticed this issue when our Altiris server started geting different systems confused.

FYI the duplicate MAC is 00-A0-D5-FF-FF-85

[Volker]

Basically, you have a good old modem thats plugged into the serial port of your thinkpad. The serial port is actually an internal USB dongle and the phone cable is invisible, but those are just technical details.

Now exactly like a normal modem, there is no ethernet going out and no need for MAC addresses. You can display the MAC address, but it'll just give you some number thats hard-coded in the pppd/OS. Only MAC addresses on ethernet devices need to be unique, at least as long as you don't rely on broken programs that assume otherwise.

[moore101]

It's interesting that they offer a MAC address but then don't follow industry standards and make the MAC a unique address. Sounds like sierra wireless is just being lazy.

[Volker]

It's interesting that they offer a MAC address but then don't follow industry standards and make the MAC a unique address. Sounds like sierra wireless is just being lazy.

Maybe I wasn't clear: Modems do not have unique MAC addresses.

Any software that assumes that non-ethernet MAC addresses are unique is broken, and I hope you didn't pay too much money for it