The MAC (Media Access
Control) address is a layer 2 address, which is burned into the ROM
chip on an Ethernet network interface card (NIC). This is a unique 48
bit number, which is written as eight hexadecimal numbers.
The first 24 bits represents the vendor
or maker of the of the NIC card (Some vendors may have more than one
24 bit vendor code assigned to them.) Each vendor code is a serial
number unique to that vendor. As shown in the Figure, The 24 bit
vendor code together with the 24 bit vendor controlled and assigned
serial number, make up a unique 48 bit MAC address.
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