MAC address
Noun
Meaning
MAC address (plural MAC addresses)
(computing, networking) Media Access Control address; a unique identifying number assigned to most network devices.
Examples
Address details The original IEEE 802 MAC address comes from the original Xerox Ethernet addressing scheme.
ARP is used for mapping a network address (e.g. an IPv4 address ) to a physical address like an Ethernet address (also named a MAC address ).
A link-local address is derived from the MAC address of the interface and the prefix fe80::/10.
Although intended to be a permanent and globally unique identification, it is possible to change the MAC address on most modern hardware.
A network node may have multiple NICs and each NIC must have a unique MAC address.
Because Wake-on-LAN operates below the IP protocol layer the MAC address is required and makes IP addresses and DNS names meaningless.