PS3 - wired and wifi share the same MAC address. What to do? Thoughts?

[Dan Munckton <lists munckfish net>]

Hi folks

On the PS3 the gelic wired and wireless hardware share the same MAC
address. I wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts on what to do if the
wireless and wired connections end up connecting to the same network
segment. 

I'm running Ubuntu Jaunty. Currently when I boot eth0 comes up as it is
setup as a shared system connection. Then when I log in because I
previously configured the wifi connection too it automatically connects
that also. This makes the network unstable.

Obviously we could add a release note advising PS3 users to uncheck
"Connect Automatically" for one of the interfaces in the connection
settings dialog. But it would be better if something could be done to
prevent this happening or warn the user automatically.

So my questions are:

1) Could there be some generic non-PS3-specific check for interfaces
that have the same MAC address and are being connected to the same
network concurrently?

2) If so where in the stack does this responsibility lay? In the kernel
driver? In NetworkManager?

3) What should the interfaces be like? Connection failure and log
message or a popup dialog?

Any thoughts or advice appreciated.

Cheers

Dan Munckton