Ethernet’s Media Access Control (MAC) Address is a type of Data Link Control (DLC) address

MAC Address

• is a 48-bit address
• types of MAC addresses:
  • unicast address - a unique MAC address
  • broadcast address - all 1s
  • multicast address - first bit set to 1 but is not broadcast address

Ethernet Adaptors

• ethernet adaptor in normal mode accepts:
  • frames addressed to its own address
  • frames addressed to the broadcast address
  • frames addressed to a multicast address, and if it has been instructed to listen to that address
• ethernet adaptor in promiscuous mode accepts all frames