Vendor(3pm)						User Contributed Perl Documentation					       Vendor(3pm)

NAME

       Net::MAC::Vendor - look up the vendor for a MAC

SYNOPSIS

	       use Net::MAC::Vendor;

	       my $mac = "00:0d:93:29:f6:c2";

	       my $array = Net::MAC::Vendor::lookup( $mac );

       You can also run this as a script with as many arguments as you like.  The module realizes it is a script, looks up the information for
       each MAC, and outputs it.

	       perl Net/MAC/Vendor.pm 00:0d:93:29:f6:c2 00:0d:93:29:f6:c5

DESCRIPTION

       The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) assigns an Organizational Unique Identifier (OUI) to manufacturers of network
       interfaces.  Each interface has a Media Access Control (MAC) address of six bytes.  The first three bytes are the OUI.

       This module allows you to take a MAC address and turn it into the OUI and vendor information.  You can, for instance, scan a network,
       collect MAC addresses, and turn those addresses into vendors.  With vendor information, you can often guess at what what you are looking at
       (e.g. an Apple product).

       You can use this as a module as its individual functions, or call it as a script with a list of MAC addresses as arguments.  The module can
       figure it out.

       This module tries to persistently cache with DBM::Deep the OUI information so it can avoid using the network.  If it cannot load DBM::Deep,
       it uses a normal hash (which is lost when the process finishes).  You can preload this cache with the load_cache() function.
	So far, the module looks in the current working directory for a file named mac_oui.db to find the cache. I need to come up with a way to
       let the user set that location.

   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 OUI, the second 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 formants 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, thoug; 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 )
	   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

		   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. The cache is stored as a "DBM::Deep" file named after the
	   "NET_MAC_VENDOR_CACHE" environment variable, or "mac_oui.db" by default.

	   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.

SEE ALSO

       Net::MacMap

SOURCE AVAILABILITY

       This source is part of a SourceForge project which always has the latest sources in CVS, as well as all of the previous releases.

	       http://sourceforge.net/projects/brian-d-foy/

       If, for some reason, I disappear from the world, one of the other members of the project can shepherd this module appropriately.

AUTHOR

       brian d foy "<bdfoy@cpan.org>"

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       Copyright (c) 2004-2007 brian d foy.  All rights reserved.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

perl v5.14.2							    2007-10-28							       Vendor(3pm)