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A MAC address (short for medium access control address) is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for use as a network address in communications within a network segment. This use is common in most IEEE 802 networking technologies, including Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Within the Open Systems Interconnection ...
The local network addresses used in IEEE 802 networks and FDDI networks are called MAC addresses; they are based on the addressing scheme that was used in early Ethernet implementations. A MAC address is intended as a unique serial number. MAC addresses are typically assigned to network interface hardware at the time of manufacture.
A broadcast address is a network address used to transmit to all devices connected to a multiple-access communications network. A message sent to a broadcast address may be received by all network-attached hosts. In contrast, a multicast address is used to address a specific group of devices, and a unicast address is used to address a single ...
The Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is a network protocol that builds a loop-free logical topology for Ethernet networks. The basic function of STP is to prevent bridge loops and the broadcast radiation that results from them. Spanning tree also allows a network design to include backup links providing fault tolerance if an active link fails.
Ethernet packet. The SFD (start frame delimiter) marks the end of the packet preamble. It is immediately followed by the Ethernet frame, which starts with the destination MAC address. [1] In computer networking, an Ethernet frame is a data link layer protocol data unit and uses the underlying Ethernet physical layer transport
In Ethernet networks, each NIC has a unique Media Access Control (MAC) address—usually stored in the controller's permanent memory. To avoid address conflicts between network devices, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) maintains and administers MAC address uniqueness. The size of an Ethernet MAC address is six octets ...
Forwarding information base. A forwarding information base (FIB), also known as a forwarding table or MAC table, is most commonly used in network bridging, routing, and similar functions to find the proper output network interface controller to which the input interface should forward a packet. It is a dynamic table that maps MAC addresses to ...
The network host IP interface binds the gateway address to the MAC address of the physical gateway by broadcasting IP datagrams and caching the MAC address of the reply from the gateway in an ARP table stored on the host. The gateway address may be added manually. On Windows computers, the gateway address is configured using the TCP/IP Properties.