What is a MAC Address?
Posted by Max Baun on Thu, Aug 28, 2008 @ 02:33 PM
If you are a resident of the United States you probably have a social security number. It is a unique number that is a unique identifier. Nobody else in the
world has the same social security number as you. It allows organizations, to track certain information about you.
A MAC Address is basically the same thing, but for computer equipment. The MAC Address is the Media Access Control, which is a unique value assigned to computer hardware for identification purposes. Your network adapters (your Ethernet card and wireless) use MAC Addresses to give you access to certain networks. Most of the time college IT departments require the students to register their MAC Address to allow them access to the network. This way, they can help prevent strangers from getting on the college network. In addition, the college can monitor what is going and coming from the MAC Address to prevent illegal activity.
Using our social security number example, we can pretend that a social security card is like a network card in a computer. Every place we give our SS number to has our information. Likewise, wherever we register the MAC Address of our network card has all the information of our network card.
Despite its purpose of being a unique identifier, most hardware with a MAC address can be changed (MAC spoofing). For example, the MAC Address on an Xbox 360 can be changed relatively easily. This number contains 12 hexadecimal numbers separated in pairs by hyphens. Looking to see what the MAC Address for your network card is? Easy, just open the Command Prompt and type in ipconfig/all. Look to find the Physical Address (MAC Address) corresponding to your Ethernet adapter.