Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier attached to most forms of networking equipment. A MAC address is 48 bits long. The MAC address is commonly written as a sequence of 12 hexadecimal digits as follows: 48-3F-0A-91-00-BC. Most layer 2 network protocols use one of three numbering spaces managed by the IEEE: MAC-48, EUI-48, and EUI-64, which are designed to be globally unique.
 
Address details The original IEEE 802 MAC address, now officially called "MAC-48", comes from the Ethernet specification. Since the original designers of Ethernet had the foresight to use a 48-bit address space, there are potentially 248 or 281,474,976,710,656 possible MAC addresses.
All three numbering systems use the same format, and differ only in the length of the identifier. Addresses can either be "universally administered addresses" or "locally administered addresses".
A "universally administered address" is uniquely assigned to a device by its manufacturer; these are sometimes called "burned-in addresses". The first three octets (in transmission order) identify the organization which issued the identifier, and are known as the Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI). The following three (MAC-48 and EUI-48) or five (EUI-64) octets are assigned by that organization in nearly any manner they please, subject to the constraint of uniqueness. The IEEE expects the MAC-48 space to be exhausted no sooner than the year 2100; EUI-64s are not expected to run out in the foreseeable future.
A "locally administered address" is assigned to a device by a network administrator, overriding the burned-in address. Locally administered addresses do not contain OUIs.
Universally administered and locally administered addresses are distinguished by the setting of the bit below the most significant bit of the address; if that bit is binary 0, the address is universally administered, while if it is binary 1, the address is locally administered. That bit is 0 in all OUIs.
MAC-48 and EUI-48 addresses are usually shown in hexadecimal format, with each octet separated by a dash or colon. An example of a MAC-48 address would be "00-08-74-4C-7F-1D". If you cross-reference the first three octets with IEEE's OUI assignments, you can see that this MAC address came from Dell Computer Corp. The last three octets represents the serial number assigned to the adapter by the manufacturer.
The following technologies use the MAC-48 identifier format:
Ethernet 802.11 wireless networks Bluetooth IEEE 802.5 Token ring most other IEEE 802 networks FDDI ATM (switched virtual connections only, as part of an NSAP address) SCSI and Fibre Channel (as part of a World Wide Name) The distinction between EUI-48 and MAC-48 identifiers is purely semantic: MAC-48 is used for network hardware; EUI-48 is used to identify other sorts of devices and software. (Thus, by definition, an EUI-48 is not in fact a "MAC address", although it is syntactically indistinguishable from one and assigned from the same numbering space.)
Note: The IEEE now considers the label MAC-48 to be an obsolete term which was previously used to refer to a specific type of EUI-48 identifier used to address hardware interfaces within existing 802 based networking applications and should not be used in the future. Instead, the term EUI-48 should be used by manufacturers and others in the field for this purpose.
EUI-64 identifiers are used in:
FireWire IPv6 (as the low-order 64 bits of a unicast network address when temporary addresses are not being used) 802.15.4 wireless personal-area networks The IEEE has built in several special address types to allow more than one Network Interface Card to be addressed at one time:
Packets sent to the broadcast address, all one bits, are received by all stations on a local area network. In hexadecimal the broadcast address would be "FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF". Packets sent to a multicast address are received by all stations on a LAN that have been configured to receive packets sent to that address. Functional addresses identify one of more Token Ring NICs that provide a particular service, defined in IEEE 802.5. These are "group addresses", as opposed to "individual addresses"; the least significant bit of the first octet of a MAC address distinguishes individual addresses from group addresses. That bit is set to binary 0 in individual addresses and 1 in group addresses. Group addresses, like individual addresses, can be universally administered or locally administered.
In addition, the EUI-64 numbering system encompasses both MAC-48 and EUI-48 identifiers by a simple translation mechanism. To convert a MAC-48 into an EUI-64, copy the OUI, append the two octets 'FF-FF', and then copy the organization-specified part. To convert an EUI-48 into an EUI-64, the same process is used, but the sequence inserted is 'FF-FE'. In both cases, the process can be trivially reversed when necessary. Organizations issuing EUI-64s are cautioned against issuing identifiers which would be confused with these forms. The IEEE's policy is to discourage new uses of 48-bit identifiers in favor of the EUI-64 system.
Confusingly IPv6 -- one of the most prominent standards that uses EUI-64 -- applies these rules inconsistently. Due to an error in the appendix to the specification of IPv6 addressing, it is currently standard practice in IPv6 to extend MAC-48 addresses (such as IEEE 802 MAC address) to EUI-64 using 'FF-FE' rather than 'FF-FF'; it remains to be seen how this inconsistency will be resolved in the future.
Individual Address Block An Individual Address Block is comprised of a 24-bit OUI managed by the IEEE Registration Authority, followed by 12 IEEE-provided bits (identifying the organization), and 12 bits for the owner to assign to individual devices. An IAB is ideal for organizations requiring fewer than 4097 unique 48-bit numbers (EUI-48). [1]
Manufacturer Access Code
A unique identifier of the manufacturers publishing rights of the piece of equipment; also used as a security tool to prevent forging/theft of electronics. The name Manufacturer Access Code came as a prototype name for experiment itself; but in the ladder years it came to be known as a Media Access Code, because of its tight-link with NICs.
Printed format The standard (IEEE 802) format for printing MAC-48 addresses in human-readable media is six groups of two hexadecimal digits, separated by hyphens (-) in transmission order, e.g. 01-23-45-67-89-ab. This form is also commonly used for EUI-64. Other conventions include six groups of two separated by colons (:), e.g. 01:23:45:67:89:ab; or three groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by dots (.), e.g. 0123.4567.89ab; again in transmission order.