Publication date: Mar. 2016
33600 Rev B
22
3-3. Media Access Control (MAC)
3-3-1. MAC Addressing
Because LAN is composed of many nodes, for the data exchanged among
these nodes, each node must have its own unique address to identify who should
send the data or should receive the data. In OSI model, each layer provides its own
mean to identify the unique address in some form, for example, IP address in
network layer.
The MAC is belonged to Data Link Layer (Layer 2), the address is defined to
be a 48-bit long and locally unique address. Since this type of address is applied
only to the Ethernet LAN media access control (MAC), they are referred to as MAC
addresses.
The first three bytes are Organizational Unique Identifier (OUI) code
assigned by IEEE. The last three bytes are the serial number assigned by the
vendor of the network device. All these six bytes are stored in a non-volatile
memory in the device. Their format is as the following table and normally written in
the form as aa-bb-cc-dd-ee-ff, a 12
hexadecimal digits separated by hyphens, in
which the aa-bb-cc is the OUI code and the dd-ee-ff is the serial number assigned
by manufacturer.
Bit 47 bit 0
1st byte
2nd byte
3rd byte
4th byte
5th byte
6th byte
OUI code
Serial number
Table 3-3 Ethernet MAC address
The first bit of the first byte in the Destination address (DA) determines the
address to be a Unicast (0) or Multicast frame (1), known as I/G bit indicating
individual (0) or group (1). So the 48-bit address space is divided into two portions,
Unicast and Multicast. The second bit is for global-unique (0) or locally-unique
address. The former is assigned by the device manufacturer, and the later is usually
assigned by the administrator. In practice, global-unique addresses are always
applied.
A unicast address is identified with a single network interface. With this
nature of MAC address, a frame transmitted can exactly be received by the target
an interface the destination MAC points to.
A multicast address is identified with a group of network devices or network
interfaces. In Ethernet, a many-to-many connectivity in the LANs is provided. It
provides a mean to send a frame to many network devices at a time. When all bit of
DA is 1s, it is a broadcast, which means all network device except the sender itself
can receive the frame and response.
3-3-2. Ethernet Frame Format
There are two major forms of Ethernet frame, type encapsulation and length
encapsulation, both of which are categorized as four frame formats 802.3/802.2
SNAP, 802.3/802.2, Ethernet II and Netware 802.3 RAW. We will introduce the
basic Ethernet frame format defined by the IEEE 802.3 standard required for all
MAC implementations. It contains seven fields explained below.
