Media Access Control

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The Media Access Control address, commonly called the Hardware Address or Physical Address, is the layer 2 address used in Ethernet to uniquely identify a network node.

The name is a misnomer; modern cards and drivers allow the MAC address to be easily altered, so use as a security measure is limited. In the past, network access and software licenses were restricted based on this address.

MTU's ResNet uses the MAC address to associate a person with their computer.

(for more information, see Wikipedia:Media_Access_Contrl).