Self Doubt

Question

Why only hexadecimal number system is used in MAC address in an NIC card and other number system ain't ?

Comments

@ Devshree Dubey, humans are very much comfortable with base 10, but machines can't

 

machines are comfortable with bases as powers of 2, it may be 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 etc

but comparing binary, octal and Hexa ===> Choosing Hexa is reducing the length.

may be it is the reason but i am not sure

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@Shaik Masthan,I see that. But machines can understand binary in a better way. As regards NIC is concerned,it is but obvious that MAC address is unique. Isn't it brother? It's like an identity. So going for a decimal or octal isn't a wrong option. :)

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It is just a number representation. Nothing to do with whether a machine can understand or not. No matter how you represent it, ones and zeros are the only thing machine will see.

Representation is for convention and convenience. Why is decimal used for IP address and hex for MAC? Probably those are the notations that got widely accepted or used. IP address would have been more compact if represented in hex. But this is just the way things got evolved and gradually got accepted and then became convention :)