I'm feeling a bit dumb here, but could someone explain to me exactly what a MAC address is and what it does? Is it broadcast like an IP? Who can find out my MAC address? Why would they want my MAC address? Etc. Any help here would be great. Thanks.

This post has been edited by microscopic^earthling: Jun 16 2005, 06:41 PM

MAC (Media Access Control) address is the physical address of the network card installed on your system - with which you connect to your router/modem over UTP ethernet cable. Network adapter cards use a burned-in address - this unique hardware address burned into a ROM chip on that network interface card.

This hardware address on the network interface card provides the definitive address for that computer network card on the network.

Every network card manufactured is supposed to have a unique MAC address. The address looks like this: 00-80-48-32-9B-6B - a combination of 6 hexadecimal numbers. With this information you can easily find out who the manufacturer of your card is and the serial/batch number of it.

The first 3 numbers actually represent the company who manufactured your card and their name can be looked up on various MAC address databases on the net by entering those numbers. The last 3 numbers represent the product batch/serial number and is left upon the company to decide how they'd use that part.
One such site which tells you the manufacturer of your card based on the first 3 numbers is: http://www.coffer.com/mac_find/

If you want to find out the MAC address of your network card, simply open up a Command Prompt in Windows and type


As you can see the last line here shows me the physical address or MAC address of my card...

This address is used in conjunction with your IP to send/receive packets in your internal network. There are lots of protocols involved in how MAC addresses are used in this regard. In other words, these physical addresses are very essential to the computers to be able to locate each other on an internal network. For more information look-up the RFC (Request For Comment) archives on MAC addresses.

Hope this clears things up a bit.
Regards,
m^e

Thanks man. That helps quite a bit. Is there a way for you to find out my MAC address or for me to find yours? Is this all stored somewhere?

goto windows start menu click run, type command then typw in ipconfig /all

I'm still a newbie, especially when it comes to more of the "Tricks of the Trade" with computers... but from the information I've been able to find out, it would be extreamly difficult for someone to find out another's MAC address. I'm also not so sure what good that information would do them. Perhaps we can get some much more ed-u-ma-cated types here to help us understand more how this all works???

Thanks in advance.

As mentioned above - finding out your own MAC address is a one-step job through ipconfig/all - but finding out someone else's MAC address - I'm not so sure of.

I don't think it can be done in any easy way or if it can be done at all. To the best of my knowledge - such a thing can be done only if the other computer is a part of your LAN.. and even in that case, you'd have to extensively analyze the packets passing to and fro on your network, and study the headers. Sometimes the packet headers contain the destination computers MAC Address - specially if the LAN is using Microsoft's NetBEUI(NetBIOS) protocol. If it is a TCP/IP based network - forget about MAC addresses... why do you need it anyway ?

There is a way of getting someone else's MAC Address, while it is still illegal, I dont recomend doing to someone with Windows because you have to hack someones computer to get it and with Windows security it will copy all of your information on your computer and send it to microsoft for extensive analyzation. If they do get the info they need to get you in Jail they will do it!

This is just a hunch, but when I'm connected I see my network and the MAC address of my wireless PC card. I'm using a Netgear WG511 PCMCIA card. I didn't see if I can see other MAC addresses (like the computer in my living room connecting to the network/internet).

Hmm. Just curious if it might actually show the MAC address for that other card in the living room PC. I don't think that's illegal since Netgear has it built-in to their software.

WeaponX: Why don't you give it a shot and let us know... even I'm interested to find out

You should be able to see the MAC in your livingroom comp if your house is part of a home network (which since you have wireless it probably is)