Bug#805923: libnet-mac-vendor-perl: Querying over the network suboptimal / local caching / package justification

[Ivan Kohler]

Package: libnet-mac-vendor-perl
Version: 1.25-1
Severity: wishlist

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 08:52:34PM +0200, Niko Tyni wrote:
> In general, I'm not thrilled about the way the module queries for the
> OUI information over the web.

FWIW, it appears the new version of the module allows additional control and
using a locally-cached copy of the data.  So, perhaps the decision is being
deferred to the application developer, who could then implement a different
cache strategy or use /var/lib/ieee-data/oui.txt if present, which is
automatically updated monthly.


> I think we have lots of copies of the same
> information in Debian already, most prominently in the ieee-data package.
>
> Does this module really make sense?

Speaking as an application author, vendor information for MAC addresses
is a useful feature.  As a Perl application author, our "go-to" for
implementing the feature was CPAN and thus Net::MAC::Vendor.  As a Debian
user and developer, having Debian include the modules in our Perl stack
(and being able to contribute new modules and maintenance) is useful.
So, from that perspective, a package for this module makes sense.
If Debian dropped it, we'd have to maintain it in our repository, as
would presumably others, so we might as well keep it in Debian and
contribute together.

We could consider a Debian-specific patch to Depend: on ieee-data and 
use /var/lib/ieee-data/oui.txt as the default data source instead of the 
web. Now that I think about it I'm very much warming up to this idea.  


-- 
Ivan Kohler
President and Head Geek, Freeside Internet Services, Inc.  http://freeside.biz/
Debian GNU/Linux developer  |  CPAN author  |  cat person  |  ski addict