Aren't ethernet addresses unique?  Course that requires
an ethernet card and some way to read the address.


"Norton, Chris" <chrisn at Kronos.com> wrote:
> Hi Cees.
> 
> You wrote: "UUID's shouldn't be big random numbers, they should be
> *provable* universally unique. At the moment, the only *provable*
> universally unique scheme that is standardized is to have the machine's IP
> address, the process id, the current time and a sequence number in it."
> 
> You make good sense in your analysis of UUIDs, but I'd like to point out
> that IP addresses are not necessarily unique either.  In my company, for
> example, the I.S. department is always messing around with those things
> (causing endless problems for me).  On many occasions I have discovered that
> there are 2 (or more!) machines on our network that have the same IP
> address!
> 
> So, while I agree that the IP address is a good starting point, I think the
> current date/time as well as the process ID would probably also be needed
> for uniqueness.
> 
> I'm not an expert in such things, but I have been bitten by this problem a
> few times in my career.  ;-)
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> ---==> Chris