In this video we're going to talk about hexadecimal.
Firstly why do we care.
Well we care about hexadecimal because it's used in networking all over the place, as an example.
When you, look at the MAC address of a device it's written in hexadecimal.
I'll show you an example in a moment when I show you the MAC address of that Windows computer.
So MAC addresses are written in hexadecimal, what's really becoming important these days is IP version
6, IP version 6 addresses are
also written in hexadecimal.
So you'll see an IP address such as FE80
colon colon 1.
You need to be able to interpret IP version 6 addresses.
You need to know how to do conversions from one numbering system to another.
As an example, you need to know how to convert hexadecimal to binary, binary to hexadecimal, hexadecimal
to decimal, decimal to hexadecimal and all those different combinations.
So if I gave you a decimal number of, 1 2 8 you need to know how to convert that into binary.
You need to know how to convert that into hexadecimal.
These are the foundations you, need to know these foundations before you really get into networking so
build a good foundation.
Learn your numbering system, learn binary,
learn hexadecimal and it'll make your life a lot easier.
Okay
So let me show you an example of where hexadecimal is used.
This is a Windows 10 computer.
It's actually that laptop over there which I'm controlling from my Mac.
I'm using windows here because a lot of people have Windows computers.
This is Windows 10 once again, I'm gonna type IP config, when I type that
you'll notice that command shows us the IP version 4 address of this computer.
but it also shows an IP version 6 address.
This is a hexadecimal value,
notice FE80.
That's known as a link local address in IP version 6.
We'll talk about that later.
But for the moment notice FE80 hexadecimal values
but let me show you a MAC address, so IP config, slash all, I'll scroll up.
There's the command.
We can see that this is the name of my windows computer.
Notice here physical address.
This is for a virtual box interface written in hexadecimal.
Notice the values 0 A 0 0 2 7 0 0 0 0 1 8.
Those are hexadecimal values once again.
Let's have a look at the wireless card.
So here we've got a wireless network adapter.
This is the physical address or MAC address.
Here is another one, physical address or MAC address.
Once again these are hexadecimal values.
You once again need to know how to work with hexadecimal.
So use the command IP config, slash all, on your windows computer to see the MAC address of your Windows
computer.
Now, we can look at the MAC address on my macbook as an example.
So forgive the pun of looking at the Mac on a Mac.
Going to the wireless connections open network preferences.
Here's my Wi-Fi interface.
I'll go to advanced, go to hardware, and you can see here is the MAC address of my wireless interface
card.
I've hidden that because a MAC address is unique to a device. I can see that once again by going to control
panel in windows go to network an Internet network and sharing center, change Adapter Settings and I
can look at the MAC address of any network interface code on my computer.
So here's my Wi-Fi network interface card or NIC, go to details and here's the MAC address.
Now, I actually change to the MAC address of this network interface card.
Notice it's a number 0 E 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1.
I manually configured that if you want to know how to do that you can watch this video which I've
put on YouTube but you don't have to do that but you need to know how to read MAC addresses and what
they mean.