
How man digits are in a network mac address quizlet mac#
Bridges gather MAC addresses by examining the source MAC address of every frame of network traffic they receive. These MAC addresses are used by devices such as bridges and Layer 2 switches for building routing tables to direct traffic through the network.

MAC (Media Access Control) AdressĮvery device and port that connects to an Ethernet LAN requires a MAC address. These addresses are added to the frame by the media access control (MAC) layer of the protocol stack. Examples of manufacturer 6-digit numbers include the following:Įach frame on an IP-based local area network (LAN) contains a source MAC address and destination MAC address in its header. Each group of 3 bytes can be represented by 6 hexadecimal digits, forming a 12-digit hexadecimal number representing the entire MAC address. The first 3 bytes (24 bits) represent the manufacturer of the card, and the last 3 bytes (24 bits) identify the particular card from that manufacturer. The uniqueness of MAC addresses is ensured by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ( IEEE), which assigns networking device vendors specific blocks of MAC addresses for the devices they produce. MAC addresses can be hard-coded into circuitry or stored in read-only memory (ROM), and they can be configured using vendor-supplied software.

MAC Address is a unique 6-byte (48-bit) address that is usually permanently burned into a network interface card ( NIC) or other physical-layer networking device and that uniquely identifies the device on an Ethernet-based network.Ī MAC address is also known as an Ethernet address, hardware address, physical address, or PHY address. Definition of MAC Address in Network Encyclopedia.
