Determination of a unique identifier is a goal of many applications for the purpose of enforcement of license management on systems. Since most modern computers do not have a unique serial number other methods are employed.

One common practice is to use the hardware address of ethernet devices for this purpose.The advantage of this method is that most modern computers have ethernet devices as either a standard or an optional device.A disadvantages is that the license check will fail if the ethernet device fails and is replaced.

Note that many computers may have multiple ethernet adapters. Licensing applications will need to take this in to account.A common scenario would be to issue a license coded to one ethernet hardware address.All ethernet addresses would be polled at run time and a match of any of these against the license would be accepted.

Methods for obtaining the Ethernet hardware address(es)

The ethernet hardware address can be accessed from several methods on Digital Alpha systems.

From the Console prompt:

On some Digital platforms there is as Console Command to determine the address from the console prompt.For example, on the DEC 3000 Model 500 use:

>>> SHOW ETHERNET

From the OpenVMS Command Line

If DECnet Phase IV is running, the ethernet address of the network device in use by DECnet may be found by using the following command:

$ MCR NCP SHOW KNOWN LINE CHARACTERISTICS

From a C program running under OpenVMS

Use this program on either a VAX or Alpha platform.

privacy and legal statement