ANA comments on TGaa MAC address assignment May 2011 doc.: IEEE 802.11-11/0051r2 March 2012 ANA comments on TGaa MAC address assignment Date: 2012-03-15 Authors: Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation

March 2012 Wednesday Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation

March 2012 History TGaa approved by motion a request to the IEEE RAC for a Standards Group MAC address to be used as the default value of dot11GCRConcealmentAddress (July 2011). The RAC responded with a MAC address (01-80-C2-00-00-19 ) and a comment: “you’ve got your own OUI, do you really want us to allocate a separate Standards Group MAC address to you?” (Feb 1, 2012) The assigned MAC address currently shows as “unassigned” in the public listings We have an OUI (00-0F-AC), which is used to identify: AKM Suite Selectors KDE Selectors Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation

March 2012 Questions to consider Do we confirm to the RAC that we want to use this address, or do we allocate a MAC address from the 802.11 OUI? If similar circumstances occur in future, do we approach the RAC for additional addresses, or do we allocate from the 802.11 OUI? Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation

March 2012 Possible Response - 1 Confirm to the RAC that we want to use the allocated address for TGaa, and instruct the publication editor to insert this address in the published TGaa. When a new 802.11 requirement arises for a MAC address assignment, the WG will then consider whether to allocate from the 802.11 OUI. Would require the ANA to create a new database tab for this purpose Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation

March 2012 Possible Response - 2 Indicate to the RAC that we do not want to confirm the TGaa allocation. The ANA creates a new managed namespace for single MAC addresses based on the 802.11 OUI. The ANA allocates out of this namespace a value for TGaa. The ANA will request volunteers to form an expert panel to check that allocations are correct –i.e. correct endianness and MAC address semantics. Who? Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation

March 2012 Friday Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation

March 2012 History - 1 TGaa approved by motion a request to the IEEE RAC for a Standards Group MAC address to be used as the default value of dot11GCRConcealmentAddress (July 2011). The RAC responded with a MAC address (01-80-C2-00-00-19 ) and a comment: “you’ve got your own OUI, do you really want us to allocate a separate Standards Group MAC address to you?” (Feb 1, 2012) The assigned MAC address currently shows as “unassigned” in the public listings We have an OUI (00-0F-AC), which is used to identify: AKM Suite Selectors KDE Selectors Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation

March 2012 History – 2 The ANA confirmed to the RAC chair that we wished to confirm TGaa the request. The RAC chair confirmed that there was no difficulty allocating a group MAC address from the 802.11 OUI. He also responded: “That is fine -- the RAC wanted to make sure 802.11 was aware that they had a choice.   I would note that in your response to the RAC indicating your decision you should indicate some rationale for your choice.” Given that we did not identify a rationale on wednesday except the concern with allocating a group address from our OUI, the ANA could not provide an adequate rationale to the RAC chair. We have therefore brought the matter back to the membership for consideration. Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation

March 2012 Proposed Response - 3 Indicate to the RAC that we do not want to confirm the TGaa allocation. The ANA creates a new managed namespace for single MAC addresses based on the 802.11 OUI. The ANA allocates out of this namespace a value for TGaa. TGaa has requested a specific value: “If the will of the working group on Friday is to use the 802.11 OUI, I would like to request the following as the group address for GCR: 01-0F-AC-47-43-52 If you stick 0x47 0x43 0x52 in to a hex editor, you get the string "GCR“” Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation

Straw Poll Do you agree with “proposed response – 3” Yes No March 2012 Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation

March 2012 Adrian Stephens, Intel Corporation