MAC & IP Addresses

• Network Interface Card (NIC)


  Every device on a network has one
• Media Access Control (MAC) address


  Every NIC has a unique MAC address, used to route frames on a LAN
• IP addressing


  Used to route frames on a WAN (such as the Internet), packets are used instead of frames
• IPv4 address


  32-bits in size, written as four numbers separated by periods, each number in the range 0-255
• IPv4 address


  • 193.74.211.63
  • 107.56.94.111
• IPv4 address range


  From 000.000.000.000 to 255.255.255.255, around 4 billion possible addresses
• IPv4 address structure


  Network identifier (3 bytes) and host identifier (1 byte)
• IPv6 address


  128-bits in size, written as eight groups separated by colons, each group made up of four hex values representing 16-bits
• IPv6 address


  • 49cd:c92d:dabb:469f:003c:4877:f44b:5441
• IPv6 address range


  340 trillion, trillion, trillion combinations approximately
• IPv4 is being replaced by IPv6 because unique static addresses are running out
• A router will have

  A unique WAN facing IP address and a LAN facing IP address
• This enabled a LAN device to have the same IP address as another device on another LAN