MAC Address – What is?

First note that a MAC address has nothing to do with Mac OS X or Macintosh computers. It is an abbreviation of “Media Access Control” and is supported by all modern computer hardware.

MAC address is an essentially unique number associated with a network card in a machine; it serves as a convenient way to distinguish between two different computers. A MAC address consists of 48 bits, usually represented as a string of 12 hexadecimal digits (0 to 9a to f, or A to F); these are often grouped into pairs separated by colons or dashes.

For example, the MAC address 001B638445E6 may be given as 00:1b:63:84:45:e6 or as 00-1B-63-84-45-E6.