Hello All,

I'am starting this thread as I would like some help / pointers.

When I was at University, the network guys manged to lock down the network by using ethers tables. I remember there being two files. One had a list of mac addresses matched to IP addresses. The other file had IP addresses matched to client/host names....

Using this system, no un-authorised NIC's could be added to the network.

My question is what was this system ( I've had the terms BIND and NIS thrown at me) as I would like to re-create this setup.

Could anybody throw any light on this or point me to some webpages that would help me here.

It's called an ARP table. It stores MAC addresses to ip numbers.

Firewall rules using this table can be scripted quite easily to DENY unlisted MAC addresses.

Is this a M$ or Unix network?, coz the implementation is very different.
M$ requires a domain controller login which is where the control takes place.
Either network type may also only accept dynamically allocated ip numbers to logon, given out by a dhcp server using the MAC tables.