you can find a nic’s mac address through
such as the card 's read - only memory or some other firmware mechanism . If assigned by the manufacturer , a MAC address usually encodes the manufacturer 's registered identification number and may be referred to as the burned - in address ( BIA ) . It may also be known as an Ethernet hardware address ( EHA ) , hardware address or physical address ( not to be confused with a memory physical address ) . This can be contrasted to a programmed address , where the host device issues commands to the NIC to use an arbitrary address .