MAC is short for Media Access Control It is a term used for Computer Networking or Local Area Network. Every Computer in a network have their own unique Hardware address or MAC address.
Where can you find the MAC address of a Computer?
You can find the MAC address of a computer using windows xp or windows 2000 server operating systems by going to command prompt and typing ipconfig /all and then press enter. You can see an entry called Physical Address and the value is in the form xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx
MAC address is embedded in your LAN adapter card by the manucfacturer of the LAN Card. Every LAN card has its unique Physical address that is used to identify and locate every computer in a Network.
MAC address operates at the Datalink layer of the OSI model which allows data to be transferred from one device to the other. This will ensure that the data arrives at the intended physical address of the destination computer.
MAC address is similar to IP. One major difference is that IP addresses are assigned by network administrators while MAC addresses are assigned by the Manufacturer of the LAN Adapter
