On the other hand, the IP addresses are used on layer 3 and help identify the devices on different networks.
Cloning mac address on a mac mac#
The MAC address works on layer 2 and helps identify the devices within the same broadcast network (such as the router). When we request a page to load on the internet, the request is responded and sent to our IP address.īoth MAC and IP addresses are operated on different layers of the internet protocol suite. The answer to this question is that every mac address is assigned to the NIC of a hardware device that helps to identify a device over a network. Reason to have both IP and MAC addresses.Īs we already had the IP address to communicate a computer to the internet, why we need the MAC address.
It is globally unique it means two devices cannot have the same MAC address.
It stands for Media Access Control, and also known as Physical address, hardware address, or BIA (Burned In Address).It is assigned to the NIC (Network Interface card) of each device that can be connected to the internet. To make communication between two networked devices, we need two addresses: IP address and MAC address. MAC address is the physical address, which uniquely identifies each device on a given network.