EUI-48™ and MAC addresses: -

What are EUI-48™ Addresses?

The EUI-48™ is a globally unique 48-bit node address, defined by the IEEE to identify network hardware and peripherals. It represents the actual physical address of the network device.

How and where to obtain EUI-48™ Addresses?

The EUI-48™ node addresses are sourced by the IEEE. They offer two options based on volumes.

Option 1 above, or the organizational unique identifiers (OUI), a 24-bit address can be purchased from IEEE for ~1,600$. The remaining 24-bits need to be uniquely programmed by the organization buying the OUI. Option 2 or the Individual Address Blocks (IAB) can be purchased for ~$550. The IAB is a particular OUI belonging to the IEEE Registration Authority, concatenated with 12 additional IEEE-provided bits, leaving only 12-bits for the owner to assign to his (up to 4096) individual devices. To learn more about this, click here.

Issues:

The EUI-48™ address is difficult and to obtain, also, the cost of serialization to ensure uniqueness is expensive and time consuming. Hence, this not only delays time to market, but also increases overall system costs. Finally, most MCU’s don’t come with in-built EUI-48™ addresses forcing designers to look at third party options for serialization and programming.

Solution:

Microchip’s new MAC address chips, specifically targets the issues listed above providing customers with fast, easy, inexpensive access to plug-and-play EUI-48™ enabled MAC Address Chips. Every one of these devices will be uniquely programmed with a different EUI-48™ address and will also come write-protected to ensure tamper-proof codes. These chips have an additional 1.5Kb of Serial EEPROM functionality that is a useful scratch-pad area to buffer small amount of data or to store configuration settings etc. Finally, they are designed to work in the popular I²C, SPI and UNI/O^® busses.

The IEEE also defines a similar EUI-64™ standard, a 64-bit node address. These chips are EUI-64™ compatible as well. (Note: This is done by incorporating one of the following 16 bits - “FFh-FEh” or “FFh-FFh” in between the first and second set of 24-bits of the 48-bit EUI-48™ address.)

Product Summary:

For more product information, click here.

For datasheets, click here.

Feature/Benefits:

Ordering Information:

To buy parts or order samples, click here.