The high-order 4 bits for the destination IP multicast address are set to 1110 binary (0b1110). The lower-order 23 bits of the destination IP multicast address are mapped to the lower-order 23 bits of the MAC address. These bits are part of the organizational unit identifiers (OUI). The high-order 25 bits is the official reserved multicast MAC address range from 0100.5E00.0000 to (request for Comment 1112). The sending device must convert the destination IP multicast address into a special MAC address as follows: What happens when it is a multicast message? To optimize network resources, an Ethernet switch also needs to understand multicast. As discussed in Chapter 1, when a device sends a broadcast frame, the destination address is all ones, and a unicast message is the destination MAC address. I’ll finish up the ending later and add instructions to convert decimal to hex.A traditional Ethernet switch (Layer 2 device) works with Ethernet frames, and a traditional router (Layer 3 device) looks at packets to make decisions on how messages will be handled. Next we will take the two last octets and convert those to hexadecimal.ġ00 becomes 64 in decimal, so add that to the MAC and it becomes 01-00-5E-40-64ġ becomes 1, add that to the MAC and we get our full MAC address 01-00-5E-40-64-01 Using the first 01-00-5E, we now add 40, which makes the MAC 01-00-5E-40. Now we use this for the next part of our MAC Address. So from our example, converting 64 to hexadecimal equals 40 or (0x40). You can use this website to automatically convert it for you: Decimals use a base 10 while Hexadecimals use a base 16. Using this method makes it much easier to work with large numbers over using decimal standard. You can think of it as though A is 10, B is 11, C is 12, D is 13, E is 14, and F is 15. Hexadecimal numbers use a base 16 where numbers are counted from 0 to 9 then letters A to F before adding another digit. Now that we have determined what the last seven bits of our second octet are we can convert it to hexadecimal. After dropping that first bit it changes the binary to 64 instead of 192! Do not skip this part. Had our multicast IP been 239.192.100.1, that would mean our binary would be 11000000. I could have explained this above but then you would have skipped through this part which does make a difference. Last 7 bits of 64 which still equals 64 converted to binary = 1000000Īfter removing 1 bit from our binary result it still equals 64 so this is what we will be using in the next step. Since we are only using the last 7 bits from the second octet, just drop the first 0 or 1 from our binary number (first binary number on the left, the result from 128 above). So above we converted the second octet of our multicast IP which was 64 to decimal which equal 01000000. You keep doing this until you can no longer subtract from the octet and you have converted decimal to binary. Can 64 be subtracted from 64? Yes, write a 1. Can 128 be subtracted from 64? No, write a 0. A quick way to do this is by following this example below. In the example I will be using the second octet of the multicast IP 239.64.100.1 which would be 64. The first step is to convert the second octet of the multicast IP to binary. You should have a good understanding of IP sub-netting or this may get a bit confusing.Ĭonvert Second Octet of Multicast IP to Binary To determine the rest of the MAC address we will use the remaining 23 low order bits to generate the full MAC address. The high order 25 bits of the MAC address are fixed and that is the 01-00-5E. As I explained above, any MAC address you see that starts with 01-00-5E is related to a multicast address. There is a specific range assigned for multicast, 01-00-5E-00-00-00 to 01-00-5E-7F-FF-FF for Ethernet and Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI). I’ll explain below exactly how to determine the multicast MAC address from the multicast IP as well as provide a few helpful websites.Īt the layer 2 level whenever multicast is used it has to be assigned a MAC address in order to work. I knew that any mac address that started with 01-00-5E was a multicast address, but wasn’t sure how the rest of it was calculated. Recently I was working to track down a multicast problem for a client on an enterprise network and needed to determine what the exact multicast MAC address would be.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |