MAC (OUI/EUI or CID/ELI) address based OIDs

Parent node: ViaThinkSoft (1.3.6.1.4.1.37476)

Technical information

Description

OIDs can be generated using an IEEE company identification (OUI or CID) or using an NUI (an NUI-48 is a 48-bit NUI that is an EUI-48, ELI-48, SAI-48, or AAI-48), such as the MAC address of a device.

Construction rule:

1.      The first arc is the number of bits that will follow in the next arc.

2.      Since many OID implementations have size limitations for arcs, an arc longer than 24 bits should be split up into 2 arcs (see example below).

Examples:

1.      An OUI (MA-L) address has 24 bits, hence the owner of the OUI AA-BB-CC (in decimal 11189196) will gain ownership over the OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.37476.9001.24.11189196

2.      An EUI-48 (usual MAC address for devices) could be AA-BB-CC-DD-EE-FF (in decimal 187723572702975). The arcs would split up into AA-BB-CC (in decimal 11189196) and 0xDDEEFF (in decimal 14544639). Hence, the owner of that device will gain ownership over the OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.37476.9001.48.11189196.14544639

Requirements:

1.      Most MAC-based identifiers can be used, but they must be defined by IEEE.

2.      They must be unique and unambiguous, because non-unique MAC-based identifiers cannot be encoded into an unique OID. Hence, AAI and Administrator CID are NOT allowed, because they are not worldwide unique and SAI may only be used if it is worldwide unique (depending on the IEEE standard defining the SAI).

3.      In case the OID is based on an actual device / network card, the ownership of the OID is lost if the device / card is given to someone else.

Examples of IEEE identifiers are:

• IEEE Registrations
  • CID***
  • OUI (MA-L)
  • MA-M*
  • OUI-36 (MA-S)
  • IAB (deprecated)
• EUI (OUI + Vendor part)
  • OUI-22 (deprecated)
  • EUI-48 / MAC-48** (deprecated term)
  • EUI-60 (deprecated)
  • EUI-64
    • Regular EUI-64
    • MAC/EUI-48 to EUI-64 encapsulation (deprecated, because duplicate EUI-64 can be formed)
• ELI*** (CID + Vendor part)
  • ELI-48
  • ELI-64
• CDI (OUI + Vendor part)
  • CDI-30 (deprecated)
  • CDI-32 
  • CDI-40 (deprecated)
  • TCDI-40
• AAI are NOT allowed, because they are not worldwide unique.
• SAI may only be used if it is worldwide unique (depending on the IEEE standard defining the SAI).

 

* IEEE recommends not to use the 28-bit identifier MA-M to identify a company, but we don't see any reason why not to do it, since the MA-M prefix is unique and unambiguous.

** You can generate an OID using the MAC of your network card, but then you must make sure that nobody else can use that network card, otherwise they could use it to generate an OID that you have previously defined. In other words: If you have created an OID using your MAC address, then you will lose the permission to use the OID namespace once you give/sell the network card to someone else.

*** IEEE defines "Administrator CIDs" (e.g. 3AA3F8, CA30BF, 4A07D6, FA94F1) which are not assigned exclusively, to allow local administrators to create ELIs. These CIDs and their constructed ELIs must not be used to create an OID, because the resulting OID will be ambiguous!

Registration Authority

ViaThinkSoft
E-Mail: oidra@viathinksoft.de
Daniel Marschall
ViaThinkSoft
Germany

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