

Like the license plate of a vehicle, a MAC address remains unchanged as it's assigned different parking spaces on networks throughout the day. While your IP address changes depending on the network you're connected to, your MAC address stays the same. A MAC address is like the license plate of a vehicle and stays with your device the same way.

The second piece of information needed to deliver information across a network is a MAC address. Don't Miss: Tactical Nmap for Beginner Network Reconnaissance.Your IP address will also change each time you join a new Wi-Fi network, as the router behind that network will assign you an IP address according to however the network was set up. The router checks to see which space is available at any given time and assigns an IP address that isn't being used to any device that connects to the network.īecause a different space might be available at different times, your IP address on a network may be different on any given day. The first is an IP address, which you can think of like a parking space that's available on a network. Why Do We Need ARP & What Does It Do?įor devices to communicate on a network, they need to be able to link two important pieces of information. A hacker can take advantage of ARP messages to silently discover the MAC and IP address of network devices or actively scan the network with spoofed ARP requests. When joining a new network, computers use the Address Resolution Protocol to discover the MAC address of other devices on the same network.
