On the other hand, the IP addresses are used on layer 3 and help identify the devices on different networks. The MAC address works on layer 2 and helps identify the devices within the same broadcast network (such as the router). When we request a page to load on the internet, the request is responded and sent to our IP address.īoth MAC and IP addresses are operated on different layers of the internet protocol suite. The answer to this question is that every mac address is assigned to the NIC of a hardware device that helps to identify a device over a network. Reason to have both IP and MAC addresses.Īs we already had the IP address to communicate a computer to the internet, why we need the MAC address. The ARP protocol is used to associate a logical address with a physical or MAC address.

It is provided by the device's vendor at the time of manufacturing and embedded in its NIC, which is ideally cannot be changed.It works on the data link layer of the OSI model.It is 12-digit, and 48 bits long, out of which the first 24 bits are used for OUI(Organization Unique Identifier), and 24 bits are for NIC/vendor-specific.It is represented in a hexadecimal format on each device, such as 00:0a:95:9d:67:16. It is globally unique it means two devices cannot have the same MAC address.It stands for Media Access Control, and also known as Physical address, hardware address, or BIA (Burned In Address).It is assigned to the NIC (Network Interface card) of each device that can be connected to the internet. To make communication between two networked devices, we need two addresses: IP address and MAC address. MAC address is the physical address, which uniquely identifies each device on a given network.

What does mac stand for in mac address