What is MAC Address?

Friends,

you have often listen about the mac address, but do you know that whats it exactly?

MAC Address is the address of our lan card and its unique..

we cant change the mac address..
there are few tricks to change the mac address, but its not recommended..
it may stop your network activity and crash your system network card as useless.

In computer networking, the Media Access Control (MAC) address is every bit as important as an IP address. Learn in this article how MAC addresses work and how to find the MAC addresses being used by a computer... (see below)


What Is a MAC Address?
The MAC address is a unique value associated with a network adapter. MAC addresses are also known as hardware addresses or physical addresses. They uniquely identify an adapter on a LAN.

MAC addresses are 12-digit hexadecimal numbers (48 bits in length). By convention, MAC addresses are usually written in one of the following two formats:

MM:MM:MM:SS:SS:SS


MM-MM-MM-SS-SS-SS

The first half of a MAC address contains the ID number of the adapter manufacturer. These IDs are regulated by an Internet standards body (see sidebar). The second half of a MAC address represents the serial number assigned to the adapter by the manufacturer. In the example,

00:A0:C9:14:C8:29

The prefix

00A0C9

indicates the manufacturer is Intel Corporation.
Why MAC Addresses?
Recall that TCP/IP and other mainstream networking architectures generally adopt the OSI model. In this model, network functionality is subdivided into layers. MAC addresses function at the data link layer (layer 2 in the OSI model). They allow computers to uniquely identify themselves on a network at this relatively low level.