Network General Corporation — two MA-L prefixes (00:00:65, 00:00:A6)

A MAC address beginning with 00:00:65 or 00:00:A6 identifies hardware built by Network General Corporation, the vendor best known for the "Sniffer" line of network protocol analyzers sold from the mid-1980s through the 1990s.

Both blocks are registered under the same company name in the IEEE MA-L registry — 00:00:65 at a San Jose, CA address and 00:00:A6 at a Sunnyvale, CA address — consistent with a hardware vendor operating more than one engineering or manufacturing site during that era.

Network General was founded May 13, 1986 by Harry Saal and Len Shustek, spun out of the earlier PC-networking company Nestar Systems. Its Sniffer protocol analyzer became the market-leading tool of its kind, generating roughly $933 million in cumulative sales by March 1997.

In December 1997 Network General merged with McAfee Associates in a roughly $1.3 billion stock swap to form Network Associates, Inc. The Sniffer product line was later divested in 2004, reconstituting a standalone "new" Network General Corporation, which NetScout Systems acquired in September 2007 for $205 million.

No adverse security signal is associated with these prefixes. Devices carrying them are legacy diagnostic hardware — portable and rack-mount protocol-analyzer probes with dedicated NICs — not consumer or IoT endpoints, so a live sighting today would most likely be archival or lab equipment rather than active production gear.

IEEE assignment

00:00:65 → Network General Corporation, San Jose, CA; 00:00:A6 → NETWORK GENERAL CORPORATION, Sunnyvale, CA [Confirmed] — IEEE MA-L (rows 000065, 0000A6)

Registry / block size

MA-L (24-bit OUI); two separate blocks registered to the same company, no third found in the IEEE MA-M registry/oui36.csv [Confirmed] — the IEEE MA-L registry, the IEEE MA-M registry, the IEEE MA-S registry (local registry mirror search)

HQ / country

registry addresses San Jose, CA and Sunnyvale, CA, US [Confirmed] — IEEE MA-L

Company status

inactive as "Network General Corporation" — merged into Network Associates, Inc. Dec 1997; Sniffer business divested 2004, reconstituting a "new" Network General; that entity acquired by NetScout Systems Sept 2007 for $205M [Confirmed] — networkworld.com, itpro.com

Device types

network protocol analyzers / packet sniffers (the "Sniffer" hardware and software line) [Confirmed] — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniffer_(protocol_analyzer), netscout.com

Notable products

Sniffer network protocol analyzer (portable and rack-mount analyzer probes) [Confirmed] — as above

Verified sample prefixes

00:00:65, 00:00:A6 (both MA-L, Network General Corporation) [Confirmed] — IEEE the IEEE MA-L registry

Founding

founded May 13, 1986 by Harry Saal and Len Shustek, spun out of Nestar Systems (1978) [Confirmed] — computerhistory.org/tdih/may/13/

Registration dates

Unknown — IEEE's public OUI data (the IEEE MA-L registry: Registry, Assignment, Organization Name, Organization Address) publishes no assignment/registration date for MAC prefixes; not to be conflated with the 1986 company-founding date, which is a separate, independently corroborated corporate-history fact

[Confirmed absence of IEEE date] — IEEE the IEEE MA-L registry structure

IANA reference

Unknown/not applicable — OUI registry entries carry no IANA RFC references [Confirmed]

Related vendors / successors

Network Associates, Inc. (1997 merger product); NetScout Systems, Inc. (2007 acquirer of the reconstituted Network General) [Confirmed] — networkworld.com, itpro.com

Analyst note

two independently registered MA-L blocks plus a well-documented corporate and product history place this well above a bare single-OUI shell registration; a MAC in either 00:00:65 or 00:00:A6 reliably identifies legacy Network General/Sniffer-era hardware, not a modern consumer or IoT device. [Likely — inference from corroborated history] — synthesis of sources above