What is an Organization Unique Identifier (O.U.I.)?

Summary: This article defines what an OUI is and provides examples.

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Symptoms

An OUI, sometimes referred to as a "company_id", is a 24 bit globally unique assigned number that is referenced by various standards. An OUI identifies a product from a specific company. There are two formats of Fibre Channel WWN defined by the IEEE:

Cause

   

Resolution

The Original Format -  Addresses are assigned to manufacturers by the IEEE standards committee, and are built into the device at build time, similar to Ethernet MAC address. First 2 bytes are either hexadecimal 10:00 or 2x:xx (where the x's are vendor-specified) followed by the 3-byte vendor identifier and 3 bytes for a vendor-specified serial number.

Example:

Bytes 2,3,4 contain the OUI for WWN beginning with 10:00 or 2x:xx  (21:00:00:1B:32:12:c0:59)  OUI = 00-1B-32)

The New Format:  First half-byte is either hexadecimal 5 or 6 followed by a 3-byte vendor identifier and 4 bytes and a half for a vendor-specified serial number.

Example:

Bytes 0 lower nibble, byte 1,2 byte 3 upper nibble.  OUI for WWN beginning with 50: or60:        (50:01:43:80:02:24:25:34)  OUI = 00-14-38

Some of the QLogic® OUIs are:

  • HBAs - 00-E0-8B,  00-1B-32, and 00-24-FF
  • FC switches - 00-C0-DD

Affected Products

Brocade 300
Article Properties
Article Number: 000067530
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 27 Jun 2021
Version:  4
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