Media Access Control

(networking)

(MAC) The lower sublayer of the OSI data link layer. The interface between a node's Logical Link Control and the network's physical layer. The MAC differs for various physical media.

See also MAC Address, Ethernet, IEEE 802.3, token ring.

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MAC layer

(Media Access Control layer) The part of the data link protocol that controls access to the physical transmission medium in local networks (see 802.3). The common MAC layer technologies are CSMA/CD for Ethernet and CSMA/CA for Wi-Fi. Earlier MAC layers were the token passing methods in Token Ring, FDDI and MAP.

MAC layer functionality is built into the network adapters, which includes a unique serial number that identifies the vendor and adapter (see OUI). See data link protocol, TCP/IP, OSI model, CSMA/CD, CSMA/CA and Ethernet.

The Bottom Layers

In IEEE 802 networks, the data link layer is split into two sublayers. The Logical Link Control (LLC) is an interface to the Media Access Control (MAC) layer. The MAC is also physical hardware, because the processes have been embedded into the transceiver chips. See IEEE 802, SNA, OSI model and Token Ring.

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References in periodicals archive ?

Most of the previous work about IEEE 802.15.4e focused on the description of three media access control mechanisms, and did not have a comprehensive analysis and evaluation to the performance of IEEE 802.15.4e MAC.

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The CD server should have a unique MAC (Media Access Control) address that will be recognizable when using any of these three automatic configuration devices.