On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 04:10:03PM -0500, Rob Townley wrote:

So when an add-in PCI NIC has a lower MAC than the motherboard NICs,
the add-in cards will come before the motherboard NICs.   i don't like it.

Actually, MAC address has nothing to do with device naming/ordering at
all.  Often systems will have onboard NICs in ascending MAC address
order, but that's not a requirement, and I've seen systems not do
that.  And once you get to add-in vs onboard, BIOS wouldn't be able to
enforce such an ordering anyhow (in general).

But yes, you raise the point that, without using MAC-assigned names or
another naming mechanism designed to cope with this, adding or
removing a card can cause a difference in device enumeration, and thus
name.

-- 
Matt Domsch
Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO
linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux