- Organizationally Unique Identifier
An Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI) is a 24-bit number that is purchased from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Incorporated (IEEE) Registration Authority. This identifier uniquely identifies a vendor, manufacturer, or other organization (referred to by the IEEE as the 'assignee' ) globally or worldwide and effectively reserves a block of each possible type of derivative identifier (such as
MAC address es, group addresses,Subnetwork Access Protocol protocol identifiers, etc.) for the exclusive use of the assignee. The OUI is subsequently used by the assignee to create particular instances of these identifiers for various purposes, such as the identification of a particular piece of equipment (e.g., anetwork interface controller (NIC)) or the identification of anetwork protocol , and for use in variouscomputer hardware products, including MAC addresses forEthernet and other NICs (network interface cards),World Wide Name s forFibre Channel host bus adapters, and other Fibre Channel andSerial Attached SCSI devices.] .64-bit Extended Unique Identifier (EUI-64):
::The EUI-64 is an identifier that is formed by concatenating the 24-bit OUI with a 40-bit extension identifier that is assigned by the organization that purchased the OUI – the resulting identifier is generally represented as a set of octets separated by dashes (hexadecimal notation) or colons (bit-reversed notation) as in FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF or FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF, as a string of 8 bytes as in {FF,FF,FF,FF,FF,FF,FF,FF}, or as a base 16 number as in FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF16.
:::Note: According to the IEEE guidelines, the first four digits of the organizationally assigned identifier (i.e., the first four digits of the extension identifier) portion of an EUI-64 “shall not be FFFE16 or FFFF16” (i.e., EUI-64 identifiers of the form ccccccFFFEeeeeeeeeee and ccccccFFFFeeeeeeeeee are not allowed) – this is to support the encapsulation of MAC-48 and EUI-48 values into EUI-64 values.
Other Identifiers:
::There are other identifiers that may be formed using the OUI but those listed above are the most commonly used.
Encapsulating:
::Other identifiers, such as MAC-48 and EUI-48 values, can be contained within a larger identifier or 'container', such as EUI-64, by creating the larger identifier through a process of combining the smaller identifier with specified values placed in specified bit-positions within the larger identifier – this process is known as 'encapsulation' and is provided for the purpose of easing the transition from MAC-48 and EUI-48 to EUI-64 and to provide a mechanism for the conversion of MAC-48 and EUI-48 identifiers to EUI-64 in such a way that duplicate or conflicting values are avoided.
:::Encapsulation of MAC-48 within EUI-64 Example:
::::Assuming that an organization has registered the OUI of AC-DE-48 and that the organization has created the MAC-48 value of AC-DE-48-23-45-67 by concatenating the extension identifier 23-45-67, this MAC-48 identifier has the following binary transmission order:
OUI | extension identifier | field
1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | octet
C A | E D | 8 4 | 3 2 | 5 4 | 7 6 | hex0011 0101 0111 1011 0001 0010 1100 0100 1010 0010 1110 0110 bits
| | | | | | | | | |
lsb msb lsb msb lsb msb lsb msb lsb msb lsb msb
::::The same MAC-48 identifier after encapsulation within an EUI-64 has the following transmission order:
OUI | MAC label | extension identifier | field
1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | order
C A | E D | 8 4 | F F | F F | 3 2 | 5 4 | 7 6 | hex00110101 01111011 00010010 11111111 11111111 11000100 10100100 11100110 bits
| | | | | | | | | | | | | |
lsb msb lsb msb lsb msb lsb msb lsb msb lsb msb lsb msb lsb msb