What Part Of A Mac Address Serves As The Extension Identifier, Or Device Id?

What Part Of A Mac Address Serves As The Extension Identifier, Or Device Id?

The last 24 bits of the mac address servers as the extension Identifier or the device Id. Today, let us discuss the know about the basic definition and the use of the mac address. All the Ethernet standards and mac addresses operate at the data link layer. But what is mac address?. The word mac stands for media access control. The mac address is the unique type of identifier that we assign to the network interface card, shortly called the NIC. The below figure shows the structure of the mac address.

Unlike the IP address, the mac address cannot be changed, simply the max addresses can be represented as the physical address. The mac addresses are unique and cannot be changed. The mac address is 48 but long. The mac address can have two sections. They are two parts. Organizational unique identifier, which is of 24 bits. This can identify the vendor. And the last 24 bits have the unique value that is assigned by the vendor. This can make the address unique.

The mac address can be of three types. The first one is the unicast mac address, which has a particular unique address. And the other one is the multicast mac address. The multicast mac address can be used for the application protocol. The multicast can be sent to all the devices, but only those with the application of the protocol which will listen to it.

We also have another type of address that is the broadcast address. the broadcast address can be sent to all the devices that are within the network. The below figure 1.2 represents the structure of the broadcast address. We always have more than one way to show the structure of the mac address. The below are the three ways we can represent the mac address

08:00:27:EC:10:61

08-00-27-EC-10-61

08.00.27.EC.10.61

• The first one is separated by the colons, this is the way how an operating system like Linux represents the mac address.
• The second one is separated by the slashes, this is the way Microsoft will display the mac address.
• And the third one is separated by the dots, this is the way how cisco represents their mac address.

Here, why do we need the mac addresses, let us take an example to understand this concept, when we want communication between the two computers in a single network. This can be done by layer 2 of the mac address. But when we come out of this network, we need the IP address. These IP addresses are the layer 3 devices, the routers mainly focus on the IP addresses to find the address of the destination.

Hence, simply we can say that the mac addresses are mainly used for communication in the local areas. And IP addresses can be used as global communication. IP Config /all can be used in the command prompt to find the mac address on our local computers. The structure of the mac address may be different based on the operating system we are checking in.