Shulou(Shulou.com)06/01 Report--

To figure this out, let's take a look at what the IP address is for.

IP address is the address used by the network layer, it can uniquely determine the location of a host in the network, and it has a way to distinguish between different networks. Specifically, you can tell which network a host is on from its IP address. For example, the host with the IP address of 193.168.1.13ip24 is on the network 193.168.1.0.

The MAC address is the address used by the data link layer, and it can also uniquely determine the location of a host in the network. But it doesn't have a good way to distinguish between different networks. Why is that?

Let's start with the structure of the MAC address. The MAC address has a total of 48bit, which is divided into two parts. The former 24bit is the manufacturer's code, and the latter 24bit is assigned by the manufacturer. If we think that MAC addresses can distinguish different networks, we can only use manufacturer code to distinguish different networks, that is to say, hosts or network devices using network cards produced by the same manufacturer belong to the same network. For example, if enterprise A uses Cisco network equipment, and enterprise B also uses Cisco network equipment, then the two companies belong to the same network. In reality, this situation is impossible.

Therefore, based on the above analysis, we know that it is impossible for MAC addresses to replace IP addresses for network layer addressing.

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