MAC address guides
Practical references for recognizing MAC addresses in real network output and understanding what their bits and prefixes mean.
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MAC address formats
See the same six bytes in colon, hyphen, dotted, bare, shortened, and split forms, then learn what case, flag bits, and bit order actually change.
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OUI and IEEE registries
The five registries behind a vendor lookup, why matching three octets finds the wrong company, and what an unknown vendor really means.
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Reading ARP tables
One host as Cisco, Linux, Windows, Juniper, HPE, and MikroTik each print it, what the age and state columns really mean, and where the table misleads.
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DHCP leases and MAC addresses
Client identifiers that are not MAC addresses, the lease formats from ISC dhcpd to Kea and Windows, and why DHCPv6 gives you a DUID instead.
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Randomized MAC addresses
Recognize local addresses, understand private Wi-Fi behaviour and SLAP quadrants, and see what a CID match can tell you.