Coca-Cola Reserves a Massive Range of MAC Addresses

Not cans by Shatrat · 2014-01-02 05:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

Vertically integrated vending machines?

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Re:Not cans by gstoddart · 2014-01-02 05:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

Or, security/privacy problems waiting to as the vending machines are integrated with a ridiculous amount of things (and with zero consideration for security).
Think social media campaigns and other things which want you to "check-in" with your phone at the soda machine.
And I'm sure the ones I'm seeing with credit-card readers are all super secure too.

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Re:Not cans by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-02 05:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

Then put your dollar bills into the machine and never worry. Banks pay for credit card breaches, not consumers. You may argue that we do so indirectly with higher fees, but not really. Fraud is a few billion dollars, but the fees they collect cover that without hassle. And since the swipe fees are money they collect at no actual cost--there's no product to produce, no actual expenses per transaction (merely a distribution of the fixed costs of maintaining the network)--they just don't worry about fraud. When you make money from air, losses aren't terribly bad.
I've had my credit card number stolen a couple times. As long as the thieves only get your number and not your actual identity (and the card info is all they will get from breach at a POS), it's merely inconvenient. The biggest hassles are setting up all the automatic payments again and learning a new number. I have a couple cards and if I'm somewhere I worry about the system's integrity, I use the card that doesn't have any autopayments associated with it. Then if it does get stolen, there's absolutely no hassle outside of a two phone calls to the issuer: one to report it, and one to activate the new card.
The bank doesn't care about losses, so I'm not terribly worried about it either. Of course, users of debit cards have a LOT more hassle, but that is their choice to use that financial product. If they learn to trust themselves use credit cards responsibly and pay off the bill each month, then they can enjoy these same benefits.
Re:Not cans by asliarun · 2014-01-02 05:48 · Score: 4, Interesting

On a slightly related note, there is a very nice Microsoft Research paper on password theft and bank fraud, and who actually gets affected.
I will admit that most of what I actually thought of this subject was quite wrong.
Linkage: http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/161829/EverythingWeKnow.pdf
Re:Not cans by CohibaVancouver · 2014-01-02 06:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

Then put your dollar bills into the machine and never worry.
[rant]

For Christ's sake USA, get rid of the dollar bill already. There's nothing more freaking frustrating that trying to feed *paper* money into a vending machine - Especially crumbled torn and dirty American singles. I don't know what on earth you print your nearly-monochrome money onto but man it sure doesn't survive well... Get some $1 and $2 coins into circulation and make your smallest paper bill a five.

[/rant]
Re:Not cans by Bengie · 2014-01-02 06:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

Where do you put $1 coins when at the strip club?
Re:Not cans by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-02 06:23 · Score: 5, Funny

In the coin slut?
Re:Not cans by mrbluejello · 2014-01-02 06:25 · Score: 5, Funny

Make it hail!
Re:Not cans by CTU · 2014-01-02 06:30 · Score: 3, Informative

But I can't keep dollar coins in my wallet and hate loose coins in my pocket
Re:Not cans by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-02 06:30 · Score: 4, Funny

Where do you put $1 coins when at the strip club?
In the slot?
Re:Not cans by Rob+Bos · 2014-01-02 06:32 · Score: 5, Informative

Never been to a strip club, but I did a quick google search and found a couple of threads on the subject.
Two answers stood out - 1, some clubs issue coupons that you can use in place of money; the strippers just redeem them at the end of the shift. 2, use $5s, you goddamn cheapskate. :)
Re:Not cans by couchslug · 2014-01-02 06:36 · Score: 2

"Where do you put $1 coins when at the strip club?"
In the Phillipines during the Cold War (I can't vouch for later) there were various establishments where the entertainers would lower themselves onto a beer bottle and engulf coins set upon the top.
Alas I only saw photos belonging to other Airmen as Mount Pinatubo rudely erupted ensuring I could not visit on TDY.

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Re:Not cans by phantomfive · 2014-01-02 06:38 · Score: 2

Bills are great because then I only need one money-handling strategy (I give the smaller coins to homeless people). If they have dollar coins, I'll need to deal with paper and coins. That's annoying.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Not cans by Penguinisto · 2014-01-02 06:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

Banks pay for credit card breaches, not consumers
Like any other business, you, the consumer, eventually do pay for them - in higher (and newer, more devious) fees, lower savings/CD interest rates, and higher loan interest rates.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that you;re getting a free ride.

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Re:Not cans by fnj · 2014-01-02 07:15 · Score: 2

I realize utterly brainless is a necessary qualification for serving in government, but it passes belief how stupid the guys in charge of currency are. Make a HELL OF A LOT more than a few billion dollar coins and simultaneously STOP MAKING NEW GODDAM DOLLAR BILLS. The old bills will rapidly turn to garbage and fade out of circulation. If some bird brains want to horde a few, fine; they won't evaporate in storage; but soon it will be good luck finding a vending machine that will take them, or a clerk dumb enough to accept the nasty, smelly, germ laden suckers.
This is not rocket science.
Re:Not cans by davester666 · 2014-01-02 07:16 · Score: 2

Must not change anything unless you have the perfect solution that everybody wants. It's the American Way!

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Re:Not cans by fnj · 2014-01-02 07:18 · Score: 5, Insightful

I can easily put 500$ in bills in my wallet
Sigh. In ones and twos? I thought not. Complete red herring.
Re:Not cans by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-02 07:20 · Score: 2, Interesting

The dancers usually use an empty beer pitcher for various games. She holds it somewhere (usually between the legs, facing forward or back), and you lob coins in. Once, I saw a dancer give away a "free" private dance (read: lap dance) by placing her pitcher in the middle of the stage and telling everyone that when the song ended, the last coin in would win. It then began torain money.
Alternatively, a little bit of moisture on a coin (she licks it) and a little bit of moisture on a cheek (or breast, stomach, etc) is practically a substitute for superglue - trying to knock that coin off a gyrating ass by throwing your own coins at it is extremely difficult (which is why the girls like it). Some of them will stick multiple coins to themselves, or use combinations of coins and pitchers for multiple targets.
Another popular game is to roll up a poster into a funnel (usually held between the legs) and use that as a target - get one in and you win the poster! If you're "lucky", one corner will even be wrinkled from moisture and have a funny smell. (Guys seem to like that)
Note that most girls don't actually like having coins thrown directly at their vaginas because it hurts (also, money is dirty as hell and infections are no fun), and there's always the risk of some asshole heating a coin up with a lighter before throwing it and burning the girl (this is a good way to have the staff help you remove loose teeth, or in the event that you really didn't want the use of your limbs for several months)
So don't worry - as long as women will expose themselves to men for money, the whole "how do I pay them?" issue will solve itself through necessity.
Signed,
- A Slashdotter who's actually been to many many strip clubs and was friends with a dancer (really).
Re:Not cans by NatasRevol · 2014-01-02 07:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

Every time I travel.
ATM only gives out $20. Some ticket/food/item only costs $2-3, I get 17 $1 coins jingling around in my pocket.
You get rather paranoid if you're out walking around.

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Re:Not cans by akinliat · 2014-01-02 07:50 · Score: 2

The strip clubs where the performers accept $1 denominations are on my list of places that I'd probably rather not set foot in.
Well, that's your problem right there. You don't go to put your foot in.
(Sorry ... couldn't resist)
Re:Not cans by mikael · 2014-01-02 07:55 · Score: 2

They were those Susan B Anthony dollars. The problem was that so many things like newspapers were sold using mechanical spring type vending machines that only accepted quarters, nickels and dimes, and not one dollar coins. Not even laundrette washing machines or electronic vending machines accepted them. So you could get rid of the spare change by buying a newspaper or a snack but not those coins. Not even supermarkets would want to exchange them. They needed the quarters to give customers change.

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Re:Not cans by CohibaVancouver · 2014-01-02 08:05 · Score: 4, Interesting

Some ticket/food/item only costs $2-3, I get 17 $1 coins jingling around in my pocket.
This seems unlikely. No vendor would give away all their change like that. They'd give you a ten, a five, then coins.
Re:Not cans by icebike · 2014-01-02 08:40 · Score: 3, Interesting

Then put your dollar bills into the machine and never worry.
[rant]
For Christ's sake USA, get rid of the dollar bill already. There's nothing more freaking frustrating that trying to feed *paper* money into a vending machine - Especially crumbled torn and dirty American singles. I don't know what on earth you print your nearly-monochrome money onto but man it sure doesn't survive well... Get some $1 and $2 coins into circulation and make your smallest paper bill a five.
[/rant]
Nobody wants dollar coins. Its been tried and died a dozen times in the US.
Seems even Canadians, once fooled, are twice shy about converting paper to coins:

In 2005, the Canadian government polled its citizens on the idea of retiring the five-dollar note, replacing it with a five-dollar coin. The money saved in making the coin would then fund the Canadian Olympic team. Canadians resoundingly rejected and ridiculed the idea of a five-dollar coin.
Paper folds. Its in a wallet without jingling and bulging.
And vending machines are very good at accepting even the filthiest of bills, because the vending companies have learned that accepting anything close is better than getting people in the habit of avoiding the machine. Especially when selling a product that costs less than the bottle it is sold in.

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Re:Not cans by Dogtanian · 2014-01-02 09:38 · Score: 2

Banks pay for credit card breaches, not consumers
Like any other business, you, the consumer, eventually do pay for them - in higher (and newer, more devious) fees, lower savings/CD interest rates, and higher loan interest rates.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that you;re getting a free ride.
And don't believe that old fallacy that it's the banks that pick up the tab either- as pointed out here, it's the retailer that almost always has to pick up the tab in such cases.
The banks simply yank back any fraudulent transactions and leave the business out of pocket- not them. This is why banks- in the UK at least- do not give a fuck about individual instances of credit card theft and fraud. They're not the ones having to pay for it.
If you're a retailer who knows with near-certainty that a credit card has been stolen and is being used fraudulently, it's virtually impossible to get the information passed on to the legitimate owner of the card. Generally speaking, nothing will be done at this stage, and nothing will happen until the legitimate owner notices fraudulent transactions on their statement, and contacts the credit card company.
Of course, that is usually *long* after the attempted fraud has taken place, along with later (possibly successful) attempts that could have been stopped, but weren't. The fraudsters are long gone, and it's the businesses that are left out of pocket.
The banks will bleat that there are too many cases of credit card theft and fraud to keep track of all these reports, even if the information is handed to them on a plate. Of course, you can bet that they'd manage to do so very quickly (by employing more dedicated staff) if they were having to foot the bill for the fraud themselves- but of course, they're not.
It's also worth noting that (again, in the UK), it's *very* difficult to get the police to do anything about even bleeding obvious cases of mail order credit card fraud, i.e. ones where the fraudulent delivery address has to be openly given. Even when details including the exact address- typically in London- are passed on to the police, nothing well be done. Same excuse, and same outcome- by the time anything happens, the fraudsters are long gone and not worth chasing up. Makes it quite easy to commit fraud; simply rent an address for a relatively short period, have the goods openly and directly delivered there safe in the knowledge that, even though the police will likely be notified, they'll be long gone before anything is done.
The customers mostly still believe- as shown here- that the banks cover the cost, so probably aren't upset as (if they think about it at all) they believe that the banks are having to foot the bill for their own incompetence. Not the case.
Personally, I'm in favour of publicising cases like this one and pointing out that the banks' nonchalance regarding people's credit cards (and by extension, personal details and- to some extent- identity theft) could have serious repercussions for them beyond the money that customers will have refunded. And pointing out that- regardless of their hypocritical (and often nickel-and-diming) identity protection schemes, it's the banks- with their self-serving laziness and disregard for credit card misuse- who are to blame for putting them at risk like this.

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Re:Not cans by ApplePy · 2014-01-02 14:03 · Score: 4, Funny

When I visit the States, I definitely wish they were coins.
You are welcome to holiday in any of the other 200+ countries.
Meanwhile, the very dumbest of the bottom of the barrel of humanity here (inner-city youths, illegal immigrants, etc) manages to visually separate Benjamins from singles, and they can't even post on Slashdot. Pretty much everyone knows that 100 > 50 > 20 > 10, etc.; those being the numbers that are clearly marked multiple times on every bill.
So... WTF is your malfunction?
And, just for good measure --

Your currency is ridiculously annoying.
Your beer sucks.

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Re:Not cans by DarwinSurvivor · 2014-01-02 17:50 · Score: 3, Funny

Your beer sucks.
Try our water, it should taste more familiar.

Does Coca Cola own their own vending machines? by barlevg · 2014-01-02 05:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

If you figure there's one Coke vending machine per 100 people, that's 3 million Coke machines in the US alone. So certainly the scale (if we extend to worldwide) is about right.

Re:Does Coca Cola own their own vending machines? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-02 05:28 · Score: 4, Informative

The 16 million number is because that's what you get when you want MAC addresses from IEEE. The other option is something like 4096 addresses and that's just dumb.
Re:Does Coca Cola own their own vending machines? by MightyYar · 2014-01-02 05:41 · Score: 4, Funny

Don't piss him off, or he'll show you the back of his right envelope.

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Re:Does Coca Cola own their own vending machines? by Andy+Dodd · 2014-01-02 05:45 · Score: 5, Informative

Don't forget that a MAC address is 48 bits. The vendor ID portion is 24 bits - leaving 24 bits (approx. 16 million addresses) as the smallest range of addresses you can obtain if you obtain a single VID.

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Re:Does Coca Cola own their own vending machines? by JustOK · 2014-01-02 05:52 · Score: 3, Funny

and 288 is too gross.

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rewriting history since 2109

Vending machines? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-02 05:21 · Score: 3, Funny

Or maybe vending machines. Also, vending machines.

Re:Vending machines? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-02 05:45 · Score: 2, Funny

vending machines....there's got to be a use for the unsold ARM processors that were intended for last year's tablets.

Vending or Inventory Controls by HighOrbit · 2014-01-02 05:22 · Score: 2

As another commenter noted, vending machines are probably part of it. I was also thinking maybe they have plans for a store-shelf inventory control system to help their distributors know when the local supermarket or convience store needs a delivery.

Not unusual by nyet · 2014-01-02 05:23 · Score: 2

From the start, OUIs were 3 out of 6 bytes long.

yep vending machines by globaljustin · 2014-01-02 05:23 · Score: 5, Interesting

It's for wireless enabled purchases at vending machines.

I did an RFP for this in grad school. In our scenario the beverage company was working with AT&T to enable the wireless internet connection.

They'll probably "partner" with other vendors of consumer goods...whatever the marketing people come up with.

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Re:yep vending machines by ahabswhale · 2014-01-02 06:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

I believe it's for more than just vending machines. The new computerized soda fountains that have been popping up in various fast food restaurants all report back to the mother ship as well.

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Re:yep vending machines by jovius · 2014-01-02 06:29 · Score: 2

I bought bottles of coke from Coca-Cola vending machines with SMS more than 10 years ago already (in Finland). In the last couple of years they've been rolling out special apps to be used with vending machines; or at least for random snack kind of setups. The phone-home -functionality has most likely existed as long... Sounds like they are about to modernize things globally.
Re:yep vending machines by bws111 · 2014-01-02 07:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

Fountains are a good bet. For instance, a certain large, well-known company that owns theme parks and resorts has recently added RFID chips to the soda cups they sell. When you go to a self-service fountain, the fountain checks if the cup is allowed to be filled. They check to see if the cup is from this location, if it is within an allowed 'free refill' time, and if it is being used too often (you must wait a few minutes before it can be refilled). No more buying a single cup and walking around all day getting 'free refills'. No more buying a single cup then giving all 8 kids a soda by pouring from the purchased cup into your own cup over and over.

Not particularly massive... by nadamucho · 2014-01-02 05:26 · Score: 5, Informative

They were allocated a single 3-byte OUI, or prefix. When you realize that 16 million OUIs were originally available, it's like making a big deal that a company was granted a /24 IP range.

Re:Not particularly massive... by Andy+Dodd · 2014-01-02 05:46 · Score: 3, Informative

Also, to my knowledge there is no provision for subdividing within an OUI - a 24 bit address range is the smallest you can get.

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retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?

Freestyle fountain machines by necro81 · 2014-01-02 05:33 · Score: 5, Informative

Coke is rolling out their Freestyle fountain dispensing machines worldwide. Each one has the ability to phone home about inventory levels, maintenance logs, and what drinks are trending where. Coke doesn't do anything small - everything they do is done on a global scale. There are 100,000 - 200,000 fast food restaurants in the United States alone. It doesn't take much imagination to see how that could scale up to 16 million machines worldwide over the product life cycle.

"Massive range"? by sootman · 2014-01-02 05:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

"The original IEEE 802 MAC address comes from the original Xerox Ethernet addressing scheme. This 48-bit address space contains potentially 2^48 or 281,474,976,710,656 possible MAC addresses."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

2^48 / 2^24 = 2^24 so OMG NOES they're getting one-sixteen-millionth of the available space!

If 16 million other companies do this we're TOTALLY SCREWED!

(Unless I did my math wrong or there are other things I'm unaware of, which is totally possible. I'm sure someone who actually knows about networking will either correct me, or confirm that this is a total non-story. If they wanted 16M IPv4 addresses this would be a little different.)

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One block is not a massive range by Shimbo · 2014-01-02 05:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

So, Coca-Cola went and spent $665 dollars for a single block. This is not news.

Re:Coke builds own NIC in machines... by DigiShaman · 2014-01-02 05:46 · Score: 4, Informative

That's not what happens. MAC addresses are assigned to vendors that implement products with network hardware, not just the development and manufacture. For example: I can look up any MAC address and see it belonging to Dell, Apple, Linksys, DLink, Netgear, and so on. The first two don't design and fab their own NICs. They use Broadcom, Intel, Marvell, and Realtek chips.

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Why not? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-02 05:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

Someone is being clueless- it's not a massive range, it's the smallest range you can reserve.

If you're a large enough corp and it doesn't cost much, you might as well reserve a block for yourself.

I don't see mac addresses going away anytime soon, and since they are given out in blocks of 16 million and there are "only" 16 million blocks one day coca cola's block of 16 million might become handy even if they don't use it now.

FFS, Slashdot. by ledow · 2014-01-02 05:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

What I read: "One of the world's largest companies has need of an allocation unique identifiers for network hardware".

Fuck, they sell 1.7 BILLION coke products every single day (their 2010 annual report, on their website FAQ too).

That means they sell over 1000 products a day for every MAC address they just reserved. They could use them to control the various parts of the fucking production lines via Ethernet and it still wouldn't be enough for their normal, everyday usage of such things. It's certainly no "Internet of things" heap-of-crap headline.

How the hell did this make it onto Slashdot?

Re:I'm Confused by SydShamino · 2014-01-02 06:06 · Score: 3, Informative

If you buy a network interface card then you have to include a connector for that card on your motherboard, and have the necessary chips to talk whatever protocol is used on that bus. Which also means you have to buy or design a motherboard - and designing one probably makes sense when costs and form factor matter and you have sufficient economies of scale.

If you're designing a motherboard, you might as well just buy the ethernet chip and put it on yourself. The chip doesn't come with a built-in MAC address; that's provided from flash (or some other nonvolatile storage device on board). Whoever programs the flash (or pays the CM to program the flash) provides it with a MAC address, not the vendor of the ethernet chip itself.

My employer designs products with built-in ethernet and we have our own MAC address range(s).

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Re:I'm Confused by randomErr · 2014-01-02 06:09 · Score: 2

Actually someone answered that question in the comments of the original article:

ka1axy: Assuming they're using something with a built-in NIC (like an ARM processor -- Freescale Kinetis for example) as a system (vending machine) controller, they wouldn't get a MAC address with the device, but would need one if they intended to use the E'net interface.

Although, that wouldn't match the diagram shown in your posting -- these devices would be all over the place, not bunched on a single private network.

08-00-1B -- still have it memorized after 25 years...I developed some of Data General's first LAN cards.

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Minimum Mac allocation by mbone · 2014-01-02 06:10 · Score: 4, Informative

It's a 48 bit address space. They have lots of addresses. This is the minimum allocation IEEE hands out. Lot's of companies have a /24 of Mac addresses.

FFS, all I wanted was some delicious sugar water by paiute · 2014-01-02 06:11 · Score: 5, Funny

GREETINGS, COCA-COLA CUSTOMER! PLEASE INSERT YOUR CREDIT OR DEBIT CARD TO GET STARTED WITH YOUR PURCHASE OF A DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT.
Uh - can't I just put in some quarters?
I AM AN INTELLIGENT INTERNET-CONNECTED VENDING WORKSTATION. I DISPENSE DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCTS, CHANGE YOUR FACEBOOK STATUS TO 'CURRENTLY ENJOYING A FINE COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT', LIKE THE COCA-COLA COMPANY, TWEET 'CURRENTLY ENJOYING A FINE COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT', SEND A PHOTO OF YOU OPENING YOUR COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT TO SNAPCHAT -
Okay, okay! Here's my Visa card.
THE VISA CARD ISSUER IS REPLYING THAT THERE IS SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY ON THIS CARD. IT WAS USED TO MAKE A PURCHASE IN THE AMOUNT OF FORTY-FIVE DOLLARS AND ZERO FIVE CENTS IN SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, FAR FROM THE ZIPCODE ON YOUR BILLING ADDRESS.
Yeah, I bought something off of Amazon - Oh, nevermind... here's another card.
WHAT IS THE PIN FOR THIS CARD?
7734
THAT PIN IS NOT RECOGNIZED FOR THIS DEBIT CARD.
It's not a debit card. It's an ATM card.
I CANNOT ACCEPT ATM CARDS DUE TO FEDERAL BANKING REGULATIONS. PLEASE INSERT A DEBIT CARD.
I don't use a debit card. They don't protect my account. It could be stolen and all the money in my account - Oh, nevermind. Do you take dollar bills?
I AM AN INTELLIGENT INTERNET-CONNECTED VENDING WORKSTATION. I DISPENSE DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCTS, CHANGE YOUR FACEBOOK STATUS TO 'CURRENTLY ENJOYING A FINE COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT', LIKE THE COCA-COLA COMPANY, TWEET 'CURRENTLY ENJOYING A FINE COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT', SEND A PHOTO OF YOU-
I know! I know! You already said that! You don't accept any cash at all?
DO YOU HAVE A PAYPAL ACCOUNT?
Yes, unfortunately I do.
PLEASE ENTER YOUR NAME AND BILLING ADDRESS ON YOUR PAYPAL ACCOUNT. PRESS THE GREEN 'I ACCEPT AND AGREE' BUTTON ON THE TOUCHSCREEN AND YOUR FINE COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT WILL BE BILLED TO YOUR PAYPAL ACCOUNT.
Okay...I guess...
THANK YOU FOR SELECTING COCA-COLA. YOUR BEVERAGE WILL BE DISPENSED SHORTLY...WAITING FOR GOOGLE ANALYTICS....LOADING...CONNECTING TO FACEBOOK.API....WAITING...LOADING...
Forget it. I should be dieting anyway.
YOU HAVE PUSHED THE RED 'CANCEL TRANSACTION' BUTTON. ARE YOU SURE?
Yes, I don't want a Coke anymore. Besides, I can't figure out a way to buy one even if I still did.
DO YOU HAVE A BITCOIN WALLET?
Look - it's starting to snow. I am going to go over and scrape some together and let it melt in my mouth. Do you want some?
WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO TAKE A SHORT FIVE MINUTE SURVEY REGARDING OUR INTERACTION TODAY? YOU WILL BE ENTERED IN A DRAWING TO WIN FIFTY DOLLARS WORTH OF COCA-COLA OR OTHER DELICIOUS COCA-COLA PRODUCT...

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New Ad Campaign by cayenne8 · 2014-01-02 06:15 · Score: 3, Funny

This is for a new ad campaign, and I can hear the new jingle now:

"I'd like to teach the world to ping...in perfect harmony...."

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Re:Coke builds own NIC in machines... by CastrTroy · 2014-01-02 06:16 · Score: 2

I can understand why they would want to put a NIC in a vending machine. However, I can't understand for the life of me why they would want to build their own NICs. That's something that would ideally be outsourced to another company. Even if you're talking millions of vending machines, it doesn't sense for a cola company to start making their own NICs. They'll probably still outsource the actual NIC construction and just get the manufacturer to use their MAC addresses. Still don't see a point though. Sure, if they own them, they can ensure that all their machines have similar NICs, and are identifiable as such, but the MAC address doesn't get past the first hop anyway, so it's not like you could identify them remotely in most circumstances. E

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Exactly how old news is this? by kasperd · 2014-01-02 06:19 · Score: 4, Informative

The oldest version of oui.txt I could find is dated 2010. And the allocation was made before that. Which means it has been more than three years since this was news. Anybody know how to look up more precisely, when it was allocated?

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Re:Exactly how old news is this? by kasperd · 2014-01-02 09:30 · Score: 4, Informative
Anybody know how to look up more precisely, when it was allocated?
Turns out the URL has changed over time. Knowing what the URL used to be allows looking up earlier versions.
- http://standards.ieee.org/db/oui/oui.txt
- http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/oui.txt
- http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/oui/oui.txt
The allocation was made between 2010 Aug 08 and 2010 Nov 24.
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Re:Simplyfying inventory management by Bigbutt · 2014-01-02 06:20 · Score: 2

MAC addresses, not IPs. They may actually be going to use IPv6. That's not part of the article.

[John]

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Shit better not happen!

Isn't it obvious? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-02 06:25 · Score: 5, Funny

It's a trademark thing. They just wanted MAC addresses starting with C0:CA:C0:1A.

Re:FFS, all I wanted was some delicious sugar wate by Tokolosh · 2014-01-02 06:34 · Score: 4, Funny

All I wanted was a cup of tea.

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Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number

Mac addresses by Boawk · 2014-01-02 06:43 · Score: 2

Apple must be giddy. Coca-Cola almost went with PC addresses.

Re:Simplyfying inventory management by Chris+Mattern · 2014-01-02 06:58 · Score: 2

But if they went IPv6, they wouldn't need all that - they could statically or dynamically configure each vending machine w/ an IPv6 address on a central DHCP6 server, and they'd be done

MAC addresses aren't part of IPv4 or IPv6 (IPv6 does have a standard for automatically generating IPv6 addresses from MAC addresses, but, as you point out, you can hand addresses out centrally from a DHCP server instead). They're part of Ethernet. TCP/IP (4 or 6) needs a data link layer to actually move the bits for it. These days, that'll be Ethernet nine times out of ten. And if you're doing Ethernet, you gotta have MAC addresses.

MAC address, not IP address. by Medievalist · 2014-01-02 08:12 · Score: 2

MAC addresses specify the backoff time for collisions on a LAN and aren't used at "worldwide" scales. They get stripped by the first router that sees them.

Only hardware vendors that need to provide unique collision avoidance characteristics on any customer's LAN need MAC address allocations.

Minimal range, not massive! by Terje+Mathisen · 2014-01-02 09:16 · Score: 2

MAC addresses consists of 48 bits, of which 24 is a vendor code and the other half some sort of serial number.

I.e. the smallest possible allocation of MAC addresses is a single vendor code, giving 2^24 or 16M unique addresses.

Sounds like an obvious starting point for a Coca-Cola MAC address in every vending machine.

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"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

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Coca-Cola Reserves a Massive Range of MAC Addresses

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