- stands for Media Access Control. its kind of like a fingerprint in a way because its basically a unique hardware identifier that uniquely identifies each NIC (network interface card) on a local network. its permanently burned into the hardware when its made
- it operates in the datalink layer of the OSI model
- written as 6 groups of two hexadecimal digits, separated by colons/hyphens
- example: 00:1A:2B:3C:4D:5E