Thread: MAC address
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Old 19-08-2008, 21:09   #9
tavon
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Re: MAC address

Quote:
Originally Posted by rkruz View Post
I know all MACs are supposed to be unique.....but....what happens on a LAN if two adapters have identical addresses?
MAC Addresses are controlled by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, it is a 48 bit hexadecimal address the first 24 bits are assigned by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers as a vendor code, the other 24 bits are for the vendor to give to each Network Interface Card a unique address. there cannot be two Network Interface Cards with the same MAC address.

of course there is MAC address spoofing which can clone a MAC address which can complicates things.

Two hosts with the same IP address on the same network would cause a conflict as Jon T has pointed out.
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