What is Media access control address(MAC)?
All networking interfaces come with their own special address already configured, which would be the media access control address the MAC address, the MAC address is often referred to as the physical address or the burned-in address of the interface. While MAC addresses may be changed or spoofed. Most often it’s set by the manufacturer and never actually changes. Now switches and other OSI layer two devices rely upon that MAC address in order to get network packets to their correct destinations.
The MAC address has a specific format. Actually, it has two specific formats. One is 48 bits in length, and the other is 64 bits in length. And both of them are represented by hexadecimal numbers. Both formats can be broken down into two parts, the organizationally unique identifier or all UI, in the extended unique identifier, the EU II, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the I triple E assigns all electronic manufacturers their own Bo UI, which always makes up the first portion of the MAC address. Each manufacturer then assigns its own t UI to each device that is produced. Usually, it is the serial number of that device.
Theoretically, no two interfaces will have the same MAC address, I need to mention the EU I 64 format. ipv6 requires that the node address or the MAC address be in an EU ii 64 format. So that MAC address has to be 64 bits in length. If the EU II of the interface is only 24 bits in length, it is actually split into two parts in 16 bits of padding are added to create the EU I 64 format. Now let’s discuss the difference between collision domains and broadcast domains.
If we talk in simple words a MAC address is the first three bytes of an IP address (the first two octets) that uniquely identifies each device connected to a network. These three bytes are called the Media Access Control (MAC) address. A MAC address is assigned to each Ethernet card at manufacture time. Each computer has its own unique MAC address.
What is CSMA and how does it work?
Before we discuss collision domains and broadcast domains, I need to talk about carrier sense multiple access with collision detection. All Ethernet networks use this technology also called CSMA. With CD when transmitting data in an Ethernet network, all Ethernet devices have equal access to the network media and are capable of transmitting data at any time.
This can lead to data collision With CSMA CD, a device listens to the carrier signal on the network media. If no other device is transmitting, the device is ready to send data. If another device sends data at the same time, a collision is possible, which can corrupt the data. The devices listen for collisions. That’s the collision detection part. If a collision occurs, the devices will stop transmitting and wait a random period of time before attempting to transmit again. To do this, they use what is called a backoff algorithm. With that out of the way, now let me explain what collision domains are.
What is meant by a Collision domain?
Collision domains are an area of the network where packets or network traffic can collide. There are some devices that break up collision domains, they can be broken up by switches, bridges and routers, but not by hubs. On the other hand, a broadcast domain is defined as all the nodes that can be reached by broadcast transmission. All the nodes that can be reached reside in the same network. Broadcast traffic cannot pass routers. So the domain is also defined by the subnet mask in that the subnet mask defines the network. Here’s a special note.
In physics, the term refers to the region around a particle where its influence extends. When a particle collides with another object, it transfers momentum to the second object. If the collision is elastic, then both objects continue moving at the same velocity after the collision. However, if the collision is inelastic, then the objects change velocities after the collision.
Technically, ipv6 does not use broadcast transmissions. ipv6 replaces broadcast transmissions with multicast transmissions. In what do you know, that’s a good segue for us to discuss types of network transmissions.
IPV4 network transmissions types
We’re going to begin this section by talking about types of ipv4 network transmissions First up is unicast. unicast is a specific source address transmission going to a specific source-destination address, it can be thought of as one-to-one communication, it’s only two devices transferring data between each other, and then there’s the multicast transmission. This is where a specific source address transmission is going to a set of registered destination addresses.
This is one of a few communication routers often use multicast transmissions to track their routes and to make changes to the routing tables. Finally their broadcast transmissions.
This is where a specific source address transmission is going to all addresses on the local network. This can be considered as one to all communication because all devices on the local network are going to be able to receive this broadcast transmission. So let’s move on to types of ipv6 network transmissions. Ipv6 uses unicast just like ipv4 does. ipv6 also uses multicast, just like ipv4, where ipv6 differs is with any cast transmission.
Anycast is where a specific source address transmission is going to a specific ipv6 address that has been assigned to multiple devices. The router uses an algorithm to determine which MAC address that has that specially configured ipv6 address is closest in only that device receives the anycast transmission, any caste can be considered as one to the closest communication.
That concludes this article on special IP networking concepts. I talked about the MAC address, I talked about the differences between a collision domain and a broadcast domain. And then I concluded with a discussion on the types of network transmission.
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