Then you go to and paste in your MAC address, and you’ll see that from the burned-in address, the hardware you’re using is an Apple device. Here’s an example: You find that the MAC address of your computer is C8-BC-C8-12-34-56.

So when you’re administering network equipment, sometimes you do a MAC address lookup to see what kind of devices are attached to a switch. Yay! Ok, next, the switch has some tool called a MAC address table which keeps a table of IP addresses and their corresponding MAC addresses. So now the PC has an IP address and a MAC address. In a little more detail, PC’s have a MAC address, and usually the router provides an IP address for the PC. From what I learned in my CCNA bootcamp class, your PC gets connected to the internet through something like this: PC -> switch -> router -> ISP -> Magical Awesome internet. Ok so the point of all the background information is that stuff that gets connected to the internet has to have a MAC address. Manufacturer’s registered identification number and may be referred to If assigned by the manufacturer, a MAC address usually encodes the And MAC addresses are most often assigned by the manufacturer of a network interface controller (NIC) and are stored in its hardware. According to Wikipedia, a MAC address is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment.

Wireshark mac lookup