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Purpose of MAC address in Frame header?

deathnote666deathnote666 Registered User regular
in Help / Advice Forum
I'm studying networking but am confused by this. If an ARP uses the IP address of the destination device to find it in order to send the response, what is the point of having the MAC address in the header at all?

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  • ZxerolZxerol for the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't do so i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered User regular
    edited February 2014
    The layer 2 interconnect (e.g. switch) uses the MAC address to determine where to direct the frame in the subnet since it only understands Ethernet frames and not the TCP/IP payload. On the client, the NIC will also use the hardware destination address to determine if should push it higher up the stack or drop it.

    Zxerol on
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