Question

1. Convert the hexadecimal Ethernet MAC address, 1a:0:2f:47:b1:2, into a 48 bits binary format. Given an Ethernet address, how do you know it is a unicast, multicast, or broadcast address?

Answer 1

Convert the hexadecimal Ethernet MAC address, 1a:0:2f:47:b1:2, into a 48 bits binary format.

We can see that we have 8 bytes above separated by colon. We have to convert each byte to its binary equivalent.

Hex	binary
0	0000
1	0001
2	0010
3	0011
4	0100
5	0101
6	0110
7	0111
8	1000
9	1001
a	1010
b	1011
c	1100
d	1101
e	1110
f	1111

1a:0:2f:47:b1:2,

Binary equivalent can be obtained by replacing hex with its binary representation.

Binary equivaent: 00011010:00000000:00101111:01000111:10110001:00000010

MAC address will have 32 bits . That means 6 bytes.

IEEE has specified that if least significant bit of left most byte is 1 , then it is a multicast address

if least significant bit of left most byte is 0, then it is a unicast address

Broadcast address is always FFFF.FFFF.FFFF