Ok, not trying to get any more technical than needed (anyway I am no engineer so..) :

MAC address is something every network interface card has (atleast ethernet ones, I must admit I don't remember how the elder TokenRing etc. cards were named, they must have had something similar). It is the hardware level 'identifier' of the card and it is unique (there should not be two network interfaces with the same hardware address (MAC) though this has been known to happen sometimes), every manufacturer uses their own 'chunk' of MAC addresses.

They look like this: 00:10:5A:D6:F8:FD and are transmitted around in your network. The IP for instance is on an upper level, over the hardware level.. many protocols (for instance NetBeui for local Microsoft Networks) use the hardware level addresses, not the IP, unless made to work over IP. You can check your NIC's (network interface card, like 3Com likes to call them) MAC-address from Win9x machines by starting the "winipcfg" program.

ie. your Empeg also has a MAC address as it has an Ethernet connection.

At where I work for, we use the MAC addresses to distribute IP-numbers to all desktop machines from our Linux dhcp server so that we can dynamically allocate the IP to the end user. For instance, you bring your laptop with an ethernet jack here, we configure it to fetch the IP-address automagically (less configuring work for the admins, you get the DNS, gateway, netmask etcetc through the dhcp also) and it works anywhere in the house with the slight bonus that we can change our own network configuration without having to access your laptop - next time you plug in, the dhcpd sees your MAC-address crying for an IP configuration and it sends it one.

When Intel caused a great fuzz about Pentium III ID-tags (the fuzz was about privacy etc.), people sort of forgot that all their computers that have a 'network card' were already uniquely identified... but now that is a different matter :).


Antti 'Amarth' Luostarinen
#14229
try BatMUD - telnet bat.org ;)