Lecture 03

Local Area Network Technologies

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 Types of networks
• There are several different types of computer networks.
• Networks can cover anything from a handful of devices within a
single room to millions of devices spread across the entire globe
• Computer networks can be characterized by their size as well as
their purpose.
• The size of a network can be expressed by the
– geographic area they occupy and
– number of computers that are part of the network.
• Some of the different networks based on size are:
– Personal area network (PAN)
– Local area network (LAN)
– Metropolitan area network (MAN)
– Wide area network (WAN)
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 Types of networks (cont’d)
• In terms of purpose, many networks can be considered
general purpose, which means they are used for
everything from sending files to a printer or to accessing
the Internet.
• Some types of networks, however, serve a very
particular purpose.
• Some of the different networks based on their main
purpose are:
– Storage area network (SAN)
– Virtual private network (VPN)

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 Personal Area Networks (PAN)
• PANs are short-range networks that are primarily used to
interconnect peripheral equipment (such as a mouse or
keyboard) with a local computer or computing system
• Is smallest network which is very personal to a user
• A typical PAN would include one or more computers,
telephones, peripheral devices, video game consoles,
headphones, TV remotes and other personal
entertainment devices
• This type of network provides great flexibility.
• Usually PAN has connectivity range up to 10 meters
– E.g: Bluetooth
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 PAN (cont’d)
• Bluetooth is a wireless networking technology designed
for very short-range connections (typically just a few
meters).
• The idea of Bluetooth is to get rid of the need for all of
those cables (e.g. USB cables) that connect our computer
to peripheral devices such as printers, mice, keyboards,
etc.
• Bluetooth devices contain small, low-power radio
transmitters and receivers. When devices are in range of
other Bluetooth devices, they detect each other and can
be 'paired' (connected)
• Can connect up to 8 active devices in master-slave
relationship ECEG 4191 5
 PAN (cont’d)
Typical uses of Bluetooth:
• Connecting a wireless keyboard
to a computer
• Connecting a wireless mouse to
a computer
• Using a wireless headset with a
mobile phone
• Printing wirelessly from a
computer or PDA
• Transferring data / music from
a computer to an MP3 player
• Transferring photos from a
phone / camera to another
device
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 Local Area Networks (LAN)
• A computer network spanned inside a building(s) and
operated under single administrative system is generally
termed as Local Area Network (LAN).
• LANs can be built with relatively inexpensive hardware,
such as hubs, network adapters and Ethernet cables.
• LANs span relatively a smaller geographical area
• The smallest LAN may only use two computers, while
larger LANs can accommodate thousands of computers.
• Often a LAN is a private network belonging to an
organization or business
• High speed and relatively low cost are the defining
characteristics of LANs.
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 LAN (cont’d)
• LANs are typically used for single site where people need
to share resources among themselves but not with the
rest of the outside world.
• Is faster and low cost compared to MAN and WAN
• Think of an office building where everybody should be
able to access files on a central server or be able to print
a document to one or more central printers.
• Those tasks should be easy for everybody working in the
same office, but you would not want somebody just
walking outside to be able to send a document to the
printer from their cell phone!
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 LAN (cont’d)
• A LAN typically relies mostly on wired connections for
increased speed and security, but wireless connections
can also be part of a LAN.
• If a local area network, is entirely wireless, it is referred
to as a wireless local area network (WLAN)
• A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a LAN that uses radio signals
(WiFi) to connect computers instead of cables.
• At the center of the WLAN is a wireless switch or router
used for sending and receiving data to the computers
(clients).
• It is much more convenient to use wireless connections
instead of running long wires all over a building.
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 LAN (cont’d)
• Wired and wireless LAN Example

Wired LAN Wireless LAN

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 Metropolitan Area Network(MAN)
• A metropolitan area network (MAN) consists of a
computer network across an entire city or small region.

• A MAN is often used to connect several LANs together to

form a bigger network.

• A MAN could be an ISP or telecommunications company

network that sells its services to end-users in that
metropolitan area

• For instance a business organization may choose MAN to

interconnect all its branch offices within the city.

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 MAN (cont’d)

E.g: MAN can be used to interconnect different branch offices of an organization

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 Wide Area Network (WAN)
• A wide area network (WAN) occupies a very large area,
such as an entire country or the entire world.
• A WAN can contain multiple smaller networks, such as
LANs or MANs.
• The Internet is the best-known example of a public WAN.
• A WAN is often created by joining several LANs together,
such as when a business that has offices in different
countries links the office LANs together.
• Because WANs are often geographically spread over
large areas, links such as optical fiber cables, satellite
radio links or microwave radio links are used
• Most of the time, WAN is not owned by a single entity
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 WAN (cont’d)

WAN interconnecting multiple LANs

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 Storage Area Network (SAN)
• SAN (Storage Area Network) is a high-speed network of storage
devices that also connects those storage devices with servers.
• With a SAN, the concept of a single host computer that owns data
or storage isn't meaningful.

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 Virtual Private Network (VPN)
• A virtual private network (VPN) is a technology that
creates an encrypted connection over a less secure
network.

• VPN is special type of secured network

• The benefit of using a VPN is that it ensures the

appropriate level of security to the systems when the
underlying network infrastructure alone cannot provide it.

• Typically, telecommuters use VPN to log in to their

company networks from home.
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 Internet
• The Internet is an example of a network that
connects all WANs, MANs, and LANs into the
world's largest global network.
• Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are responsible
for maintaining the integrity of the Internet
while providing connectivity between WANs,
MANs, and LANs throughout the world.

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Network topologies

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 Introduction
• The term topology refers to the arrangement or physical
layout of computers, cables, and other components on
the network.
• Topology describes the method used to do the physical
wiring of the network.
• Physical topology consists of the cables, workstations,
and other peripheral devices that comprise the network
• The most common physical network topologies include
– Bus topology
– Ring topology
– Star topology
– Mesh topology
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 Bus topology
• Single cable connects all network nodes without
intervening connectivity devices
• Electrical signals are sent from one end of the
cable to the other.
• All connected devices receive that electrical
signal transmission
• Terminators stop signals after reaching end of
wire
– Prevent signal bounce
• E.g: legacy Ethernet (10Mbps)
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 Bus topology (cont’d)
• Devices in the bus network
• Listen to the bus for traffic
• If no traffic is detected, then transmit
• Otherwise, if the bus is busy with traffic, wait for a random
period of time before attempting to transmit again
• Repeated attempts will be made until the bus is found free

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 Bus topology (cont’d)
• Advantages
• Works well for small networks
• Because it uses a single cable, it is inexpensive to
implement
• Easy to add computers to it
• Disadvantages
• Potential for congestion with network traffic
• Not scalable for large networks
• If the cable breaks, the entire network goes down

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 Ring topology
• Each node is connected to the two nearest nodes so the entire
network forms a circle
• One method for passing data on ring networks is token passing
• None of the devices is more important than any of the others
• In this topology, to transmit on the wire a computer must have
control of the token or wait for the token to be free
• Active topology
– Each workstation transmits data
• E.g: Token ring

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 Ring topology (cont’d)
• Advantages
• Easier to manage; easier to locate a defective node or cable
problem
• Well-suited for transmitting signals over long distances on a
LAN

• Disadvantages
• Expensive
• Requires more cable and network equipment at the start
• If one computer in the ring stops working, the whole network
stops

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 Star topology

• Every node on the network is connected through a

central device
• Hubs, switches or routers can be used as the central
device
• Any single cable connects only two devices
– Cabling problems affect two nodes at most
• Requires more cabling than ring or bus networks
– More fault-tolerant
• Easily moved, isolated, or interconnected with other
networks
• Scalable- easy to grow
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 Star topology (cont’d)
it is very simple to join two star networks together by
connecting their central devices to each other

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 Star topology (cont’d )
• Advantages:
• If a cable fails, it will only affect one workstation
• Easy to manage, more computers can be added
without disruption
• Scalable
• Most popular topology in use; wide variety of
equipment available
• Disadvantages:
• The central device is a single point of failure
• Requires more cable than the bus

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 Mesh topology
• It set up so that each device is directly connected to
every other device on the network

• Highly redundant: If one link goes down, the device

transmits via another link

• Advantage:
– The links are redundant

• Disadvantage
– Very expensive

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Network devices

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 Introduction
• Computer networking devices are units that
transmit data in a computer network
• Networking devices refer to devices facilitating
the use of a computer network
• Devices which are the last receiver or those that
generate data are called hosts or data terminal
equipment.
• There are many networking devices, but here
only the common ones are discussed

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 Hub
• It is one of the simplest and the easier way to connect
computers
• The basic function of a hub is to take data from one of
the connected devices and forward it to all the other
ports on the hub.
• The method of sending data to all systems regardless of
the intended recipient is referred to as broadcasting
• This method of operation is inefficient because, in most
cases, the data is intended for only one of the connected
devices.
• On busy networks, broadcast communications can have a
significant impact on overall network performance.
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 Hub (cont’d)
• Network hubs share all their
bandwidth between every
connected device
• All ports of a hub are in the same
collision domain and they all work in
a half duplex mode.
• Hubs are physical layer devices with
no any intelligence of learning
hardware addresses.
• hubs do not allow much room for
expansion
• As the cost of switches becomes
affordable, hubs are becoming rarely
used nowadays
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 Bridge
• A bridge functions by blocking or forwarding data, based on the
destination MAC address written into each frame of data
• If the bridge believes the destination address is on a network
other than that from which the data was received, it can forward
the data to the other networks to which it is connected.
• If the address is not on the other side of the bridge, the data is
blocked from passing.
• Bridges “learn” the MAC addresses of devices on connected
networks by “listening” to network traffic and recording the
network from which the traffic originates.
• A bridge breaks the collision domain and improves performance
compared to hubs.
• A bridge is a data link (Layer 2) device

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 Switch
• Rather than forwarding data to all the connected ports (like hub), a
switch forwards data only to the port on which the destination
system is connected.
• It looks at the Media Access Control (MAC) addresses of the devices
connected to it to determine the correct outgoing port.
• By forwarding data only to the system to which the data is
addressed, the switch decreases the amount of traffic on each
network link dramatically.
• Ports of a switch work in full duplex.
• Each port of switch (or bridge) is in its own collision domain. i.e,
switches break collision domains
• But switches, bridges and hub networks are with in the same
broadcast domain.
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 Switch (cont’d)
• Because only two devices are on each
segment (the system and the switch),
there are no collisions.
• All the decisions which are related to
the movement of the data inside of
switches are taken by the special
hardware called ASICs (Application
Specific Integrated Circuits).
• Switches also work at the layer 2 of the OSI model.
• The advantage of switches over bridges is that switches can
have many ports and they switch frames using the hardware
unlike bridges which are slow as they are software based.
• Switches have completely replaced bridges!
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 Router
• Routers are network devices that literally route data
around the network.
• By examining data as it arrives, the router can determine
the destination address for the data; then, by using
tables of defined routes, the router determines the best
way for the data to continue its journey.
• Unlike bridges and switches, which use the hardware-
configured MAC address to determine the destination of
the data, routers use the software-configured network
address (IP) to make decisions.
• The basic requirement for a router is that it must have at
least two network interfaces.
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 Router (cont’d)
• If they are LAN interfaces, the
router can manage and route
the information between two
LAN segments.
• Routers rely on routing
protocols to find a best path
to a given destination.
• Routers can break broad cast
domains which is the
limitations of layer 2 switches.
• Routers are layer 3 (network
layer) devices
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 Wireless Access Point (WAP)
• Wireless access points is a transmitter and receiver (transceiver)
device used for wireless LAN (WLAN) radio signals.
• A WAP is typically a network device with a built-in antenna.
• WAPs use the wireless infrastructure network mode to provide a
connection point between WLANs and a wired LAN.
• WAP receives transmissions from wireless devices within a specific
range and transmits those signals to the network beyond (wired
one)

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 Firewall
• A firewall is a networking device, either hardware or software
based, that controls access to an organization’s network.
• This controlled access is designed to protect data and resources
from outside threat.
• To do this, firewalls are typically placed at entry/exit points of a
network.
• For example, a firewall might be placed between an internal
network and the Internet.

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 Media converters
• Media converters are simple networking devices
that make it possible to connect two dissimilar
media types.
– such as twisted pair with fiber optic cabling

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LAN Technologies

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 Introduction
• LAN technology is the special combinations of software
and hardware which makes the network perform at a
specific speed and in the certain way.
• In OSI model, higher layer protocols (layer 3 and above)
are independent of network architecture and are
applicable to LANs, MANs, and WANs.
• Thus, a discussion of LAN protocols is concerned
principally with lower layers of the OSI model.
• The specification of LAN standards is described by IEEE
802 reference model.

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IEEE 802 reference model
• The lowest layer of the IEEE
802 reference model
corresponds to the physical
layer of the OSI model
• Above the physical layer are
the functions associated with
providing service to LAN users
which corresponds to the layer
2 of OSI
• The data link layer of the OSI
model is divided into Logical
Link Control (LLC) and Medium
Access Control (MAC) sub
layers

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 LLC vs MAC sublayers
• The MAC sublayer is concerned with
– On transmission, assemble data into a frame with address and
error detection fields.
– On reception, disassemble frame, and perform address
recognition and error detection.
– Govern access to the LAN transmission medium.
• The LLC sublayer is concerned with providing an
interface to higher layers
– Describes the network layer protocol
• The separation is required because the logic required to
manage access to a shared-access medium is not found
in traditional layer 2 data link control.
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 LAN technologies

• The most common LAN technologies include

– Ethernet
– Token Ring
– FDDI
• In this course, Ethernet will be discussed in
detail

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 Token ring
• One of the most common LAN technologies
• In Token ring, stations are connected by transmission
links in a ring topology.
• Information flows in one direction along the ring from
source to destination and back to source.
• The access to the media is controlled by a control frame,
the token, that circulates around the ring when all
stations are idle.
• Only the station possessing the token is allowed to
transmit at any given time.
• The token circulates, from one station to the next, helping
to guarantee fair access to the available bandwidth.
• Token ring is specified in IEEE 802.5 standard
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 Token ring (cont’d)
Token ring network
• When the frame arrives back to the
source station, the source station
strips the frame from the ring and
then releases the token
• Token Ring originally ran at 4 Mbps.
Upgraded in 1989 to 16 Mbps

• When a station wishes to transmit, it must wait for token to pass by

and seize the token.
– One approach: change one bit in token which transforms it into a
“start-of-frame sequence” and appends frame for transmission.
– Second approach: station claims token by removing it from the
ring.
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 Token ring (cont’d)
• Uses twisted-pair cabling with differential Manchester
line encoding.
• Permits 16-bit and 48-bit addresses (same as 802.3).
• Under heavy load – ring is “round-robin”
• Advantages – fair access
• Disadvantages – ring is single point of failure, added
issues due to token maintenance
• Beaten by Ethernet for LAN applications due the following
reasons
• Higher speeds of Ethernet
• Lower cost of Ethernet

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 Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI)
• FDDI is a standard developed by the American National
Standards Institute (ANSI) for transmitting data on
optical fibers
• FDDI uses a ring topology of multimode or single mode
optical fiber transmission links operating at 100 Mbps to
span up to 200 kms
• 16 and 48-bit addresses are allowed.
• Uses a dual ring
– First ring used to carry data at 100 Mbps
– Second ring used for primary backup in case first ring fails
– If no backup is needed, second ring can also carry data,
increasing the data rate up to 200 Mbps

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 FDDI
A

E
B

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 FDDI (cont’d)
• Dual rings (primary and secondary) –transmit in opposite
directions
• Normally, second ring is idle and used for redundancy for
automatic repair (self-healing).

Token Ring FDDI

• Based on ring topology • Based on ring topology
• Uses Shielded twisted
pair • Uses optical Fiber cable
• 4, 16 Mbps • 100 Mbps
• No reliability specified • Reliability specified (dual ring)
• Uses Differential
Manchester encoding • Uses 4B/5B encoding

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 Ethernet protocol

Source: Cisco Acad.

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 Introduction
• Ethernet is now the dominant LAN technology in the world.
• Ethernet is not one technology but a family of LAN technologies.
• Ethernet is the most widely used local area network technology
and uses star topology .
• Since its development in 1980, it has evolved from its initial
10Mbps data rate (Ethernet), to Fast Ethernet (100Mbps), Gigabit
Ethernet (1000Mbps), 10Gigabit Ethernet (10000Mbps) and other
higher bandwidth technologies.

• An access method is needed in IEEE 802.3 Ethernet when a single

medium is shared between devices

• The access method is imposed on all the stations connected to the

network to ensure that the transmission medium is accessed and
used in a fair way
– One station only uses the medium at a time
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 Ethernet operation
• It is a family of networking technologies that are defined
in the IEEE 802.3 standards.
• Ethernet supports data bandwidths of:
– 10 Mb/s
– 100 Mb/s
– 1000 Mb/s (1 Gb/s)
– 10,000 Mb/s (10 Gb/s)
– 40,000 Mb/s (40 Gb/s)
– 100,000 Mb/s (100 Gb/s)

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 Ethernet operation (cont’d)
• Ethernet relies on the two separate sublayers of the data link layer:
the Logical Link Control (LLC) and the Media Access Control (MAC)
• LLC sublayer
– The Ethernet LLC sublayer handles the communication between
the upper layers and the lower layers.
– LLC is between the networking software and the device
hardware.
– LLC is implemented in software, and its implementation is
independent of the hardware.
• MAC sublayer
– MAC constitutes the lower sublayer of the data link layer.
– This sublayer has two primary responsibilities:
• Data encapsulation
• Media access control
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 Ethernet operation (cont’d)
Data encapsulation
• The data encapsulation process includes frame assembly before
transmission, and frame disassembly upon reception of a frame.
• In forming the frame, the MAC layer adds a header and trailer to
the network layer PDU.
• Data encapsulation provides three primary functions:
• Frame delimiting: The framing process provides important
delimiters that are used to as synchronization between the
transmitting and receiving nodes.
• Addressing: The encapsulation process also provides for data link
layer addressing (physical or MAC addressing).
• Error detection: Each Ethernet frame contains a trailer with a cyclic
redundancy check (CRC) of the frame contents.

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 Ethernet operation (cont’d)
Media Access Control
• Media access control is responsible for the placement of frames on
the media and the removal of frames from the media.
• This sublayer communicates directly with the physical layer and
controls access to the media
• Ethernet is a contention-based method of networking.
• A contention-based method means that any device tries to transmit
data across the shared medium whenever it has data to send.
• However, if multiple devices on a single medium attempt to
forward data simultaneously, the data will collide resulting in
corrupted, unusable data.
• For this reason, Ethernet provides a method for controlling how the
nodes share access through the use a Carrier Sense Multiple Access
(CSMA) technology.
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 Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA)
• CSMA is used to first detect if the media is carrying a signal.
• If a carrier signal on the media from another node is detected, it
means that another device is transmitting.
• When the device attempting to transmit sees that the media is
busy, it will wait and try again after a short time period.
• If no carrier signal is detected, the device transmits its data.
• It is possible that the CSMA process will fail and two devices will
transmit at the same time.
– This is called a data collision. If this occurs, the data sent by both devices will
be corrupted and will need to be resent.
• CSMA is usually implemented in conjunction with a method for
resolving media contention.
• The two commonly used methods to resolve media contention
are: CSMA/Collision Detection and CSMA/Collision Avoidance
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 Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) …
CSMA/Collision Detection
• In CSMA/CD, the device monitors the media for the presence of a
data signal.
• If the medium is idle, transmit, If the medium is busy, continue to
listen until the channel is idle.
• If a collision is detected during transmission, the station stops
transmission of the frame and transmits a brief jamming signal to
ensure that all stations know that there has been a collision.
• After transmitting the jamming signal, it waits for a random amount
of time, referred to as the back off time, then attempts to transmit
again
• If another collision occurs, the time intervals from which the
random waiting time is selected are increased step by step. This is
known as exponential back off.
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 CSMA/CD Algorithm
Station is ready to
send

New attempt Waiting for a

random time

Medium is
free?
No (Medium
occupied)
Yes
(medium
available)

Transmit while Stop & send

listening jam signal
Collision
discovered
No collision

Transmission OK
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 Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) …
CSMA/Collision Avoidance
• In CSMA/CA, the device examines the media for the presence of a
data signal.
• If the media is free, the device sends a notification across the
media of its intent to use it and the device then sends the data.
• This method is used by 802.11 wireless networking technologies.
• Traditional forms of Ethernet , on the other hand, were developed
to use CSMA/CD method.
• The incorporation of switched technologies in modern networks
has largely displaced the need for CSMA/CD in local-area networks.
– Almost all wired connections in a LAN today are full-duplex connections -
collisions do not occur and CSMA/CD is unnecessary
• However, wireless connections in a LAN environment still have to
take collisions into account, hence use the CSMA/CA method
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 Ethernet frame format
• Both the Ethernet header and trailer have several sections
of information that are used by the Ethernet protocol.
• Each section of the frame is called a field. As shown in
the following figure, there are two styles of Ethernet
framing:
– IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard which has been updated several
times to include new technologies and the DIX Ethernet
standard which is now referred to Ethernet II
• The most significant difference between the two
standards is the addition of a Start Frame Delimiter (SFD)
and the change of the Type field to a Length field in the
802.3 framing standard.
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 Ethernet frame format (Cont’d)
IEEE 802.3 vs Ethernet II frame formats

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 Ethernet frame format (Cont’d)
• Both the Ethernet II and IEEE 802.3 standards
define the minimum frame size as 64 bytes and
the maximum as 1518 bytes.
– This includes all bytes by excluding the Preamble and
Start Frame Delimiter fields
• If the size of a transmitted frame is less than the
minimum or greater than the maximum, the
receiving device drops the frame

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 Fields of Ethernet frame
• The primary fields in the Ethernet frame are:
• Preamble and Start Frame Delimiter Fields: The Preamble (7
bytes) and Start Frame Delimiter (1 byte), fields are used for
synchronization between the sending and receiving devices.
– These first eight bytes of the frame are used to get the attention of the
receiving nodes to tell the receivers to get ready to receive a new frame.
– The Preamble consists of 7 bytes all of the form 10101010 used for
synchronization
– The SFD is a single byte, 10101011, which is a frame flag, indicating the
start of a frame
• Destination MAC Address Field: This 6-byte field is the identifier
for who the recipient for this frame is. The address in the frame is
compared to the MAC address in the device. If there is a match,
the device accepts the frame (i.e., the frame is addressed to it).
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 Fields of Ethernet frame (cont’d)
• Source MAC Address Field: This 6-byte field identifies the frame's
originating device (or the source).
• Length /Type Field: Length in IEEE 802.3 indicates the number of
bytes of data in the frame whereas the type field of Ethernet II is
used to indicate the type of payload carried by the frame. For
example 0800 signifies an IP payload
• Data Field: This field (46 - 1500 bytes) contains the encapsulated
data from a higher layer, which is a generic Layer 3 PDU, or more
commonly, an IPv4 packet.
– All frames must be at least 64 bytes long. If a small packet is used, additional
bits called pad are added to increase the size of the frame to this minimum
size.
• Frame Check Sequence Field: The Frame Check Sequence (FCS) field
(4 bytes) is used to detect errors in a frame. It uses a cyclic 32-bit
cyclic redundancy check (CRC). The sending device includes the
results of a CRC in the FCS field of4191the frame.
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 MAC Address Structure
• A unique identifier called a MAC address is used to identify the
actual source and destination nodes within an Ethernet network.
• MAC addresses must be globally unique.
• As you may recall, MAC addressing is added as part of a Layer 2
PDU.
• An Ethernet MAC address is a 48-bit binary value expressed as 12
hexadecimal digits (4 bits per hexadecimal digit).
• The first three octets identify the organization that issued the
identifier and are known as the Organizationally Unique Identifier
(OUI) and are assigned to a manufacturer by IEEE.
• All MAC addresses assigned to a NIC or other Ethernet device must
use that vendor's assigned OUI as the first 3 bytes.
• All MAC addresses with the same OUI must be assigned a unique
value (vendor code or serial number) in the last 3 bytes.
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 MAC Address Structure

• E.g: for a MAC address of 00-08-a1-08-c8-13 which is represented

in hexa-decimals,

• The MAC address is often referred to as a burned-in address (BIA)

because, historically, this address is burned into ROM (Read-Only
Memory) on the NIC.
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 Frame forwarding example
Host H1 sends data to host H3 . When the data (packet) is encapsulated, H1 adds
its own MAC address and H3’s MAC address in the source and destination
address of the frame format. Then each receiving host compares the destination
MAC address with its own

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 Unicast MAC address
• In Ethernet, different MAC addresses are used for Layer
2 unicast, broadcast, and multicast communications.
• A unicast MAC address is the unique address used
when a frame is sent from a single transmitting device
to a single destination device.
• In the example shown below, a host with IP address
192.168.1.5 (source) requests a web page from the
server at IP address 192.168.1.200.
– For a unicast packet to be sent and received, a destination IP
address must be in the IP packet header.
– A corresponding destination MAC address must also be
present in the Ethernet frame header.
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Unicast MAC address

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 Broadcast MAC address
• A broadcast communication means that all hosts on that
local network (broadcast domain) will receive and
process the packet.
• Many network protocols, such as DHCP and Address
Resolution Protocol (ARP), use broadcasts.
• In broadcast communication, the source address is
always unicast MAC address but the destination will be
broadcast MAC address.
• On Ethernet networks, the broadcast MAC address is 48
ones displayed as hexadecimal FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF.

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Broadcast MAC address

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 Multicast MAC address
• Multicast addresses allow a source device to send a
packet to a group of devices.
• The destination address will be group address but the
source will always have a unicast address.
• The multicast MAC address is a special value that begins
with 01-00-5E in hexadecimal.
• An example, as shown in the animation, is the multicast
hexadecimal address 01-00-5E-00-00-C8

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Multicast MAC address

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