Hey everyone! I came across an interesting situation on one of my servers today. The server has a MAC address of 00:00:00:00:00:00 and it seems to be functioning just fine. How is this even possible? Why would a manufacturer create a MAC address like this?
6 Answers
I think that's a pretty common sight with some USB adapters. I noticed one like 00:00:00:00:00:01 in my DHCP table yesterday! It's frustrating when vendors are lazy about this!
It's the manufacturer's responsibility to program the MAC address during production, and sometimes they just don’t do it, or they use cheap chips. If the address is missing, some drivers should assign one automatically, but it doesn't seem like that happened here. I wouldn’t trust a device with a 00:00:00:00:00:00 MAC address in a larger network.
Yeah, it works as long as you don’t have another device with the same MAC! I had a similar experience back when Vista was new. I installed it, and suddenly no internet because two machines had the same MAC!
To break it down, MAC addresses starting with 00-00-00 to 0F-FF-FF are generally reserved for future use. They may work locally as user-defined identifiers but could create conflicts later. So in short, yes, it can work, but it's not a reliable solution with all devices.
Generally, a network card shouldn't have a MAC address of all zeros. It might relate to the 'Test Driver' being installed. I personally wouldn't trust that brand of USB network card again if they do this regularly—it could lead to issues, especially if two devices with the same address are on the same network.
The server doesn't really care about its MAC address as long as it's unique on your local network. That's probably why it works! Sometimes manufacturers forget to set a proper MAC during production, leaving it as 00:00:00:00:00:00.
I noticed it’s using USB—most of these usually pass through the MAC from the main PC. Maybe it's just not compatible in this case and that’s why it shows up like this.