Date: 2025-09-17 09:38Tags: networking, explained Everyone who's ever looked into computer networks in detail has asked, at some point in their life, "why we need MAC addresses if we already have IP addresses?" A typical packet found on a typical network has a structure like this: Ethernet preamble and sync bit (not normally considered part of packet data) 6 bytesDestination MAC address 6 bytesSource MAC address 2 bytesEtherType 0x86DD (indicates this is an IP packet) IP (payload of Ethernet) 4 ...