What is a MAC Address?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
1,047 words · ~5 min read
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whenever you click on an enticing Link in a web browser the website you're
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looking at knows to send whatever the link contains to your computer and not
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your neighbors because your computer sends its IP address kind of like a
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return address on an envelope but as it turns out IP addresses only get you as
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far as the modem you have in your house and these days most of us have tons of
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things connected to our routers especially wirelessly phones laptops
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tablets computers other people's phones
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consoles CH casts oh and they're all
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connected nearly all the freaking time
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you don't really want to be thinking about it so how does your home networking equipment know to send those
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questionable videos to you and not your
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parents sitting in the Next Room well each device on your network has
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something called a Mac Address yes even the PCS Mac in this case stands for
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media access control it identifies which
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device is which on your local network so
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here's how they work when data arrives at your home from the worldwide internet
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your router needs to decide which device to send that data to it does this by
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keeping track of the Mac addresses of all the devices connected to it then
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assigning what's called a private IP address usually starting with 1
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192.168 to every device this is also why
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you usually punch in those numbers to access your router's control panel
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through your browser this is very different from a public IP which is what
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the rest of the internet sees as being your IP address for your entire home
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network and what comes up when you type what's my IP address into Google your
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router keeps track of outbound requests such as when you click on a link so when
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the data you want arrives at your router it attaches the correct private IP
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address to the data packets ensuring that they got to your computer or device
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since all those private IP correspond to the correct Mac Address now this might
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understandably seem a little redundant since your computer now has both a
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private IP and a Mac Address that can both individually identify it but in
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reality you need both since although both the public and private IPS stay the
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same throughout this process the Mac addresses on the data packets are
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constantly being changed they only tell the data where to go for its next hop
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when your data gets to the next device the Mac Address has changed in order to
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tell it where to go well next since your data might go through numerous servers
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and routers before it finally gets to your device Mac Address information is
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crucial even though you have a private IP another upside of Mac addresses is
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that normally they always stay the same with many devices having their Mac
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addresses hardcoded into the firmware at the factory making it easy to spot a
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malfunctioning device on the network if you're trying to troubleshoot and if you
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want to protect your network by making it so that only devices that you approve
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can connect many routers use Mac addresses to restrict access to known
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devices very useful if you're worried someone might try to steal your Wi-Fi
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password or even plug in physically isps
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also use predefined Mac addresses to make it easy to provide you with the
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service you paid for so that your neighbor isn't the one getting that
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expensive gigabit connection that you're shelling out money for every month of
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course they also use these to block access if you aren't paying your bills
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however so type that as you will it is possible to spoof a Mac Address however
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and you might want to if you're concerned about your privacy on a public
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Wi-Fi connection or you connect a new device to your network that your ISP
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might not recognize but be for warned that this might not make your ISP happy
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tequi and enter Techquickie in the how did you hear about a section all right
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