Introduction

1. the mac address, also known as a physical address, hardware address or ethernet address, is a unique serial number of 48-bit (6-byte) used to define the identity of a network device.

2. the mac address is usually represented by six sets of two-digit hexadecimal digits, separated by colon (:), short horizontal line (-) or dot (.).

3. the mac address is usually burned in the firmware of the network interface card (nic), or in the hardware of the network device.

4. theoretically, each network interface card has a world-unique mac address, and this uniqueness is assigned and maintained by ieee.