On Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:27:14 +0300
Dmitry Mishin [off-list ref] wrote:

Hi,

Could somebody explain, why bridge uses minimal MAC of the attached devices?
It makes this address instable, variable during bridge life-cycle, which is 
not good for DHCP. For example, I want to attach multiple virtual devices to 
one physical. Then, I need to make sure that after each virtual device 
addition, bridge addr is not changed and still addr of the physical device.  
Why not to use MAC of the first attached device?

The bridge physical address is the minimum of all the attached devices.
This is done because the STP standard requires it.  You can reset it
to be the same as any of the attached devices. This will not cause a problem
unless using STP.