Patent ID: 8401024

Claim:
A system for generating a plurality of unique locally administered virtual Media Access Control (MAC) addresses for emulating an Ethernet network, said system comprising: a MAC address database for storing original MAC addresses for all nodes in the network; and an address mapping unit coupled to the database, wherein the address mapping unit is configured to: access the MAC address database to extract original MAC addresses; and map the original MAC address for each node in the network to a unique locally administered virtual MAC address, wherein for mapping, the system is configured to: define a MAC domain for the virtual MAC address utilizing a first portion of the virtual MAC address; indicate that the address is a locally administered address utilizing a second portion of the virtual MAC address; denote a unit-specific use utilizing a third portion of the virtual MAC address; and denote an organizationally assigned unit-unique MAC address utilizing a fourth portion of the virtual MAC address; wherein the unique locally administered virtual MAC address includes six octets, and wherein the first portion of the virtual MAC address that is utilized to define the MAC domain is six most significant bits of a first octet of the virtual MAC address; and a network emulator configured to utilize the unique locally administered virtual MAC addresses for all of the nodes in the network to perform an emulation of the Ethernet network.