Your computer has a MAC address for every network interface. The last 3 pairs are specific to the device. The first 3 pairs usually correspond to a manufacturer code, the same way that segments of UPC barcodes map to a specific manufacturer. This means there are 2^48 bits or 281,474,976,710,656 possible MAC addresses. MAC addresses are 6 pairs of hexadecimal digits, separated by colons. ARP stands for Address Resolution Protocol, and is a way of mapping a device’s IP addresses to the corresponding MAC addresses What do they look like?

You can see the MAC addresses that your computer by opening up a command line and typing arp -a. If a computer wants to send information to a computer on a different network, it will have to use an IP address to have the information delivered via router. A switch keeps a record of all MAC addresses on a network, and only delivers information to the intended recipient’s port on a network (compared to a hub, which broadcasts indiscriminately). Switches, which operate on the data-link layer (level 2) of the OSI model, use MAC addresses to deliver information to and from devices on the same network. MAC addresses aren’t to be confused with Macintosh computers, commonly called “Macs”. MAC addresses may also be called physical addresses or hardware addresses. This number is meant to be globally unique (but in some cases is not…). What is a MAC address? A MAC address (or media access control address) is a number assigned to a network interface on a computer.

Wifi network mac address acess