Functions

run( @macs )

If I call this module as a script, this class method automatically runs. It takes the MAC addresses and prints the registered vendor information for each address. I can pass it a list of MAC addresses and run() processes each one of them. It prints out what it discovers.

This method does try to use a cache of OUI to cut down on the times it has to access the network. If the cache is fully loaded (perhaps using "load_cache"), it may not even use the network at all.

lookup( MAC )

Given the MAC address, return an anonymous array with the vendor information. The first element is the vendor name, and the remaining elements are the address lines. Different records may have different numbers of lines, although the first two should be consistent.

The normalize_mac() function explains the possible formats for MAC.

normalize_mac( MAC )

Takes a MAC address and turns it into the form I need to send to the IEEE lookup, which is the first six bytes in hex separated by hyphens. For instance, 00:0d:93:29:f6:c2 turns into 00-0D-93.

The input string can be a separated by colons or hyphens. They can omit leading 0's (which might make things look odd). We only need the first three bytes

        00:0d:93:29:f6:c2   # usual form
        00-0d-93-29-f6-c2   # with hyphens
        00:0d:93            # first three bytes
        0:d:93              # missing leading zero
        :d:93               # missing all leading zeros
    

fetch_oui( MAC )

Looks up the OUI information on the IEEE website, or uses a cached version of it. Pass it the result of normalize_mac() and you should be fine.

The normalize_mac() function explains the possible formants for MAC.

To avoid multiple calls on the network, use "load_cache" to preload the entire OUI space into an in-memory cache. This can take a long time over a slow network, though; the file is about 60,000 lines.

fetch_oui_from_ieee( MAC )

Looks up the OUI information on the IEEE website. Pass it the result of normalize_mac() and you should be fine.

The normalize_mac() function explains the possible formants for MAC.

fetch_oui_from_cache( MAC )

Looks up the OUI information in the cached OUI information (see "load_cache").

The normalize_mac() function explains the possible formats for MAC.

To avoid multiple calls on the network, use "load_cache" to preload the entire OUI space into an in-memory cache.

If it doesn't find the MAC in the cache, it returns nothing.

extract_oui_from_html( HTML, OUI )

Gets rid of the HTML around the OUI information. It may still be ugly. The HTML is the search results page of the IEEE ouisearch lookup.

Returns false if it could not extract the information. This could mean unexpected input or a change in format.

parse_oui( STRING )

Takes a string that looks like this:

        00-03-93   (hex)            Apple Computer, Inc.
        000393     (base 16)        Apple Computer, Inc.
                                                                20650 Valley Green Dr.
                                                                Cupertino CA 95014
                                                                UNITED STATES
    

and turns it into an array of lines. It discards the first line, strips the leading information from the second line, and strips the leading whitespace from all of the lines.

With no arguments, it returns an empty anonymous array.

load_cache( [ SOURCE ] )

Downloads the current list of all OUIs, parses it with parse_oui(), and stores it in $Cached anonymous hash keyed by the OUIs (i.e. 00-0D-93). The fetch_oui() will use this cache if it exists.

By default, this uses "http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/oui.txt", but given an argument, it tries to use that. To load from a local file, use the "file://" scheme.

If "load_cache" cannot load the data, it issues a warning and returns nothing.

This previously used DBM::Deep if it was installed, but that was much too slow. Instead, if you want persistence, you can play with $Net::MAC::Vendor::Cached yourself.