Addresses
Since every station on the LAN listens to every packet transmission,
it needs some means of determining not only which packets are
meant for it but also what station sent the packet.
Therefore, each network interface card (NIC) is given an address, and
each packet contains a destination address and a source address.
The IEEE 802 committee, which is responsible for defining the MAC
protocols, came up with standardized addresses for its LANs.
Most NICs are assigned a 48-bit address at the time of manufacture,
but you have the option of changing the default address.
In the netWorks application, an unique integer address is
assigned to each NIC model at the time of its instantiation.
You cannot change this value.
Copyright © 1999 by SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.
