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[NightmarePatrol]

The Media Access Control (MAC) address, a hardware address that uniquely identifies each node of a network. It consists of six hexadecimal numbers. For example the mac address on this particular system I am using at the moment (at work) is  00:11:43:ba:5e:93.

The first half of a MAC address contains the ID number of the adapter manufacturer. (00:11:43) In this case the manufactuerer of thei PC is Dell (see here for a complete list) These IDs are regulated by an Internet standards body which was originally Xerox. The second half of a MAC address represents the serial number assigned to the adapter by the manufacturer. In the example.

MAC addressing works at the data link layer, IP addressing functions at the network layer (layer 3). It's a slight oversimplification, but one can think of IP addressing as supporting the software implementation and MAC addresses as supporting the hardware implementation of the network stack. The MAC address generally remains fixed and follows the network device, but the IP address changes as the network device moves from one network to another.

Now if someone on your network set their IP to a static value (hard coded) that will cause lots of grief. I'm sure their ISP was all over them about that. Cable providers are really picky about letting inbound access on certain ports to their customers. They say it's for their protection. What they really don't want is people setting up web servers and game servers on their home systems. The reason is that many cable providers are stretched to the max on bandwidth availibility, especially now with delivering HD content.

Back to work for me or I'll keep rambling  on and on...