Simon Blake wrote:
MAC filtering works extremely effectively, but has been a pain to administer - discovering the MAC filters in place is a constant surprise to exchange users, and it requires that exchange users have to interact with Citylink when they'd rather not do so (usually at 3am, when they're stressed, and we're sleepy).
So up until now MAC filtering has been applied haphazardly, because it caused such an increase in workload for both exchange participants and Citylink.
I actually don't see this as a problem. APE and WIX could be considered as critical infrastructure within the New Zealand Internet. As such I think that a certain level of administration overhead can be assumed to be necessary. If what you are saying is that the continued smooth running of APE and WIX is at risk by relying on spanning tree, and that MAC filters would mitigate this risk in the short term, then the increased administration overhead is possibly justified. I don't think having to work around MAC filters is a significant barrier to entry for anyone who is serious about network service continuity. Dean