I'm very new to computer networking and I'm trying to figure out this dilemma about the Unicast, Multicast and Broadcast transmissions. I was told that MAC address are unique for each device and they don't change. So let's say my MAC address is 6C F0 49 E5 25 AA
Translating the first octet 6C = 0110 1100 The least significant bit is 0.
Does this mean that my computer allows unicast communications but not multicast?
So each device depending on the least significant bit of their MAC address, can either allow unicast or multicast communications? How does it work with broadcast then?
I'm sorry, but I'm really confused and I want to learn.
Best Answer
That indicates that your NIC's MAC is a unicast address - that's what it's supposed to be. The NIC also accepted broadcast and those multicasts that it is subscribed to - regardless of its hardware MAC.
Think of the hardware MAC of the NIC's default address. It only accepts frames that are destined to that unicast address, or to a broadcast/multicast address, indicated by a set bit 0 in the first octet.
A NIC can also be programmed by the driver to accept other unicast addresses, or even be reprogrammed to ignore its own hardware address.