Well, the method is pretty simple : you take the first three bytes of the MAC address, add “FFFE” (which is a reserved value by the IEEE) and you add the last three bytes of your MAC address. So, how does one convert a MAC address to an IPv6 address? As a quick reminder, an IPv6 address is made of six groups of 2 bytes, and it is also written in hexadecimal.Īs a consequence, there is a direct conversion from a MAC address to an IPv6 address, which is the basis of the EUI-64 format.ĭeveloped in RFC 2373, EUI-64 is a method that allows any host to have an IPv6 address, removing the need for a DHCP server that was heavily used in an IPv4 environment.
This format is very similar to the IPv6 format. As we also saw, MAC addresses are made of hexadecimal numbers separated by hyphens or dots. Using MAC Addresses for IPv6Īs we discussed earlier, there are 48 bits in a MAC address. In practice, there are no such things as “ 64-bit” MAC addresses but network administrators often use this term in order to designate the “EUI-64” notation.
IPv4, made of 32 bits, were extended to IPv6 which are made of 128 bits. With the rise of IPv6, new specifications came in order to solve the scarcity of MAC addresses in the world.
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