Re: [boost] [Review] UUID library (mini-)review starts today, November 23rd

Subject: Re: [boost] [Review] UUID library (mini-)review starts today, November 23rd
From: Francois Barel (frabar666_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-11-28 01:34:39

Manuel Fiorelli wrote:
>>
>> Why not leaving the burden of retrieving the MAC address to the user,
>> then?
>>
>
> For Windows user I found the article
>
> http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/i-n/network/networkinformation/article.php/c5451
>
> with a warning
>
> http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/i-n/network/networkinformation/comments.php/c5451/?thread=5453
>

I can add another one (although I'm not sure how the OS behaves in
that case): if you actually want something unique, you cannot blindly
take the first MAC you get, you need to be smarter (and unfortunately
I don't know how to do that).

I recently saw the case where a developer thought he was getting
something unique by retrieving the first MAC address of the machine...
only to discover that on machines with VMWare installed, the first two
returned MAC addresses are actually the MAC addresses of VMWare's
virtual network adapters, which are (by default) the same everywhere.
IOW, his code was returning the same MAC address on every PC with
VMWare installed.

François