What is MAC Address

What is MAC Address?

• MAC stands for Media Access Control.
• A MAC Address uniquely identifies each device on a network.
• No two devices in the world cannot have same MAC address.
• MAC address is a six byte hexadecimal number that is burned in to every NIC by its manufacturer.
• MAC address is also called as physical address .where as IP address is called as a logical address. 

What is NIC ?

• NIC stands for Network Interface Card.
• Network Interface Card is a hardware component(circuit board or a chip) which is used by a node to connect to a network.
• There are various types of NIC .They are as follows,

                 1 . wireless NIC - they are for wifi connection.

                 2.  wired NIC - they are for Ethernet connection.

                 3.  USB NIC - they are the the devices plugged in to the                                           usb port.

The above picture is how a wired NIC card looks like.

The above picture is how a wireless NIC card looks like.

The above picture is how a USB wireless NIC card looks like.

• Each of these NIC cards have a six byte address embedded with it by its manufacturer.

How to find out your MAC address on windows laptop or pc ?

• open command prompt and type the command " ipconfig /all "
• then you can see a list of items displayed ,in it find physical address .that physical address similar to " 00-21-97-AD-29-A5" is your MAC address.
• it contains numbers and alphabets only from A to F.

The MAC address is broken up in to two parts 

                                  "00-21-97-AD-29-A5"

• The first three bytes of the MAC address identifies the manufacturer of the NIC card .(e.g: netgear ,linksys etc..)
• The last three bytes are unique number from the manufacturer.It uniquely identifies each device on a network.

What is ARP ?

• ARP stands for Address Resolution Protocol .
• ARP is a protocol which is used to map the ipaddress of a node with its corresponding MAC address in a network.

We can use MAC address to identify nodes only with in a network.

We cannot use MAC address to transfer data packets over another network.

• If you have a laptop you will have wifi and also ethernet port.There will be separate MAC address for both of it.
• If you are connected to network using wifi then you use the your wifi NIC card address as your MAC address ,otherwise if you connected through ethernet port then you use your Ethernet NIC card address as your MAC address.

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