MAC address

Computers that use a computer network or internet network need to be identified. For this reason, many network connection types, like Ethernet or Wi-Fi, use unique addresses to identify the network card, a part of a computer, to access the network. These addresses are usually called the Media Access Control address or MAC address.

Each computer is given a MAC address by its computer maker. The way for giving MAC addresses to computers, created by Xerox, is used.^[1] MAC addresses have 48-bits (how many 1s or 0s it has in it). As each of the twelve entries can have 16 possible values (0 through 9 and A through F), there are 16¹² or 2⁴⁸ (or 281,474,976,710,656) possible MAC addresses. MAC addresses identify many things, such as the type of device being used.

A MAC address is used by the network to send and receive data (computer information) to the right place almost like mail being sent and received from a home mail address. The MAC address is like a door number or street number.