Media Access Control (MAC address or Layer 2 addresses or physical address) addresses are 48 bit (six bytes) addresses represented in hexadecimals. The purpose of representing the binary address in hexadecimal format is to make it easier for humans to read and understand.
For example, the MAC address 10101010.11110000.11000001.11100010.01110111.01010001 in binary can be represented as shorter hexadecimal equivalent AA.F0.C1.E2.77.51.
In a MAC address, one hexadecimal digit resembles a group of four contiguous binary bits, called a nibble. The first nibble 1010 from the left most byte in above example represent the first equivalant hexadecimal A in its hexadecimal representation, and the second nibble 1010 from the left most byte in above example represent the second equivalant hexadecimal A in its hexadecimal representation.
The first three bytes of the MAC address identifies the organization that issued the identifier, and is known as OUI (Organizationally Unique Identifier). You can search for the listings in following URLs.
http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/oui/public.html
Refer the following table for easy conversion from binary to decimal and hexadecimal numbers.
Decimal |
Binary |
Hexadecimal |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
10 |
2 |
3 |
11 |
3 |
4 |
100 |
4 |
5 |
101 |
5 |
6 |
110 |
6 |
7 |
111 |
7 |
8 |
1000 |
8 |
9 |
1001 |
9 |
10 |
1010 |
A |
11 |
1011 |
B |
12 |
1100 |
C |
13 |
1101 |
D |
14 |
1110 |
E |
15 |
1111 |
F |
Related Topics...
• TCP/IP Network Access Layer
• Media Access Control (MAC) addresses
• TCP/IP Internet Layer
• IP Addresses
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