Les Mikesell wrote:
The concern it more general - more about unpredictable differences. Having seen a difference in what the hwaddr setting does even within a version, I wouldn't count on it to work across versions without testing it first.
Absolutely, and things get even murkier with Virtualised Interfaces and VM's where there is sometimes no real relation to the MAC Addr at all! Even the Vendor portion cant be relied upon to identify a device.
While still on the same subject of upgrades and testing etc, if someone is creating VM's to migrate a real machine into take a look at vmware's Converter tool ( url: http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/ ). I've not used it myself, but heard from people who have that it does what one would expect from such a tool, and handles most network issues / drive and driver issues fairly cleanly.
- KB