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Why do we need MAC addresses?

Everyone who's ever looked into computer networks in detail has asked, at some point in their life, "why we need MAC addresses if we already have IP addresses?" A typical packet found on a typical network has a structure like this: There's a destination IP address, but there's also a destination MAC address. A very common question is: What's that for? Why are there two sets of addresses? Why can't there just be IP addresses? If you search the Internet, you might find answers like "IP addresses are logical while MAC addresses are physical" or "a MAC address is the only way to uniquely identify a device".

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