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Comment by magicalhippo | Hacker News Reader

While neat, I'm not sure why should get this over a NanoPi R4S[1] if it's a router I'm after. The R4S is quite capable[2] and at $65 for the 4GB model, significantly cheaper than this board plus a CM4 module even at pre-chip shortage prices.

Sure this has HDMI output and more GPIO, but still.

[1]: https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product...

[2]: https://www.stupid-projects.com/posts/benchmarking-the-nanop...

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From the first site:

> Due to the shortage of the chip that has a unique built-in MAC address, we no longer list the R4S board with a unique MAC address for retail sales. If you want to order the R4S board with a unique MAC address, you have to place an order with a minimum order quantity of 100 pieces.

the f...?

Umm yeah, can someone smarter than me explain why we would want a globally unique MAC address in a router?

You might want two or more routers (or network cards) on the same layer 2 (physical) network, if you buy two devices with the same MAC ARP (address resolution protocol) for example can't work. Typically the chip manufacturer "buys" MAC address ranges from IEEE, some cheap chip manufacturers won't. You can sometimes work around this in software by allocating a new random address to the interface

Oh, that makes sense. Thank you!

Here's my recent comment[1] with real life example.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32211843

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