MAC Addresses

Every piece of ethernet hardware (or node) that exists in the world has an individual serial number. This is known as it's Media Access Control address or MAC Address. Each one constsist of 6 hexidecimal numbers seperated by hyphens and are very obvious to see. i.e. 00:40:8c:3c:03:70 The first 3 numbers specify the type of equipment. For example, 00-40-8C-xx-xx-xx is an AXIS webcam. The rest of the numbers make up a unique identifier for that piece of equipment. Search by Mac Address: Search my Manufacturer: The MAC Address of the system is most commonly used for automatically assigning a human readable name when a particular machine starts up. Systems such as DHCP and BOOTP do this, converting the MAC Address into an IP Address which itself will have an individual domain name assigned. 00:40:8c:3c:03:70 -> 192.168.32.16 -> webcam.internal.microsoft.com Remember no two pieces of equipment share a MAC address so even if you keep changing your IP Address, don't think that you can't be traced!?!?!?! Spoky huh!

Posted: 29th July 2003