Explained: What is ‘mac-binding’, the condition specified for using the Internet in J&K

News:Recently,the use of social media was allowed in Jammu and Kashmir with a condition that Internet connectivity will be made available with mac-binding.

Facts:

About MAC and IP address:

  • Media Access Control Address(MAC) and Internet Protocol Address(IP) are the addresses that uniquely define a device and a connection in a network.
  • The main difference between MAC and IP address is that MAC is a hardware identification number that is unique to every device.On the other hand,IP address is assigned to every device while accessing the Internet.

About Mac-binding:

  • Mac-binding necessarily means binding together the MAC and IP addresses so that all requests from IP address are served only by the computer having that particular MAC address.
  • In effect, it means that if the IP address or the MAC address changes, the device can no longer access the Internet.
  • Further,monitoring authorities can also trace the specific system from which a particular online activity was carried out.