Category: Network Fundamentals

MAC address, what that means and what MAC address actually is?

Let’s make it simple

The Layer 2 address is unique on the local network and represents the address of the end device on the physical media. In a LAN using Ethernet, this address is called the Media Access Control (MAC) address. When two end devices communicate on the local Ethernet network, the frames that are exchanged between them contain the destination and source MAC addresses. So we can say that unique identifier called a Media Access Control (MAC) address was created to help in finding the source and destination address in an Ethernet network. MAC addressing is added as part of a Layer 2 ethernet frame. An Ethernet MAC address is a 48-bit binary value expressed as 12 hexadecimal digits.

WAN – The phrase “wide area network” in a word is known as WAN.  That wide ranging network works collectively with the help of hardware such as computers and related resources. Cisco has introduced a lot of devices such as modem and routers for WAN, protocols and technologies such as ATM, Cisco frame relay etc so to provide a better wide area network (WAN) environment.

Online visitors usually want to know their IP address for certain reasons like: for game playing purpose, technical support, remote connection and proxy detection etc. Moreover, they can also check is their address changed or still there are using their personal e-mail server. If you want to gallop your personal e-mail or web server then static IP address will best for you.

An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is actually a numerical tag that is assigned to each participating device over the network either a computer or a printer. These devices are attached via networking using internet protocols for their communication.

Two main functions of an IP address are given under:

1. Identifying a host or a network interface
2. allocating addresses

What is LAN? Connecting two PCs for the purpose of sharing data and attached peripherals that mean, you have established a LAN (local area network). But the figure of computers connected within a LAN can be fixed and can be to a limit of several hundreds computer systems.