Medium Access Control (MAC)

The Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is used to provide the data link layer of the Ethernet LAN system. The MAC protocol encapsulates a SDU (payload data) by adding a 14 byte header (Protocol Control Information (PCI)) before the data and appending an integrity checksum, The checksum is a 4-byte (32-bit) Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) after the data. The entire frame is preceded by a small idle period (the minimum inter-frame gap, 9.6 microsecond (µS)) and a 8 byte preamble (including the start of frame delimiter).


The purpose of the idle time before transmission starts is to allow a small time interval for the receiver electronics in each of the nodes to settle after completion of the previous frame. A node starts transmission by sending an 8 byte (64 bit) preamble sequence. This consists of 62 alternating 1's and 0's followed by the pattern 11. Strictly speaking the last byte which finished with the '11' is known as the "Start of Frame Delimiter". When encoded using Manchester encoding, at 10 Mbps, the 62 alternating bits produce a 10 MHz square wave (one complete cycle each bit period).

The purpose of the preamble is to allow time for the receiver in each node to achieve lock of the receiver Digital Phase Lock Loop which is used to synchronise the receive data clock to the transmit data clock. At the point when the first bit of the preamble is received, each receiver may be in an arbitrary state (i.e. have an arbitrary phase for its local clock). During the course of the preamble it learns the correct phase, but in so doing it may miss (or gain) a number of bits. A special pattern (11), is therefore used to mark the last two bits of the preamble. When this is received, the Ethernet receive interface starts collecting the bits into bytes for processing by the MAC layer. It also confirms the polarity of the transition representing a '1' bit to the receiver (as a check in case this has been inverted).


MAC encapsulation of a packet of data

The header consists of three parts:


The final field in an Ethernet MAC frame is called a Cyclic Redundancy Check (sometimes also known as a Frame Check Sequence). A 32-bit CRC provides error detection in the case where line errors (or transmission collisions in Ethernet) result in corruption of the MAC frame. Any frame with an invalid CRC is discarded by the MAC receiver without further processing. The MAC protocol does not provide any indication that a frame has been discarded due to an invalid CRC.

The link layer CRC therefore protects the frame from corruption while being transmitted over the physical mediuym (cable). A new CRC is added if the packet is forwarded by the router on another Ethernet link. While the packet is being processed by the router the packet data is not protected by the CRC. Router processing errors must be detected by network or transport-layer checksums.

Inter Frame Gap

After transmission of each frame, a transmitter must wait for a period of 9.6 microseconds (at 10 Mbps) to allow the signal to propagate through the receiver electronics at the destination. This period of time is known as the Inter-Frame Gap (IFG). While every transmitter must wait for this time between sending frames, receivers do not necessarily see a "silent" period of 9.6 microseconds. The way in which repeaters operate is such that they may reduce the IFG between the frames which they regenerate.

Byte Order

It is important to realise that nearly all serial communications systems transmit the least significant bit of each byte first at the physical layer. Ethernet supports broadcast, unicast, and multicast addresses. The appearance of a multicast address on the cable (in this case an IP multicast address, with group set to the bit pattern 0xxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx) is therefore as shown below (bits transmitted from left to right):

    0                           23 IP Multicast Address Group  47
    1000 0000 0000 0000 0111 1010 xxxx xxx0 xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
    |                                     |
    Multicast Bit                         0 = Internet Multicast
                                          1 = Assigned for other uses

However, when the same frame is stored in the memory of a computer, the bits are ordered such that the least significant bit of each byte is stored in the right most position (the bits are transmitted right-to-left within bytes, bytes transmitted left-to-right):

    0                           23                            47
    |                           |                             |
    0000 0001 0000 0000 0101 1110 0xxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
            Multicast Bit          IP Multicast Address Group


The Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) with Collision Detection (CD) protocol is used to control access to the shared Ethernet medium. A switched network (e.g. Fast Ethernet) may use a full duplex mode giving access to the full link speed when used between directly connected NICs, Switch to NIC cables, or Switch to Switch cables.

Receiver Processing Algorithm

Runt Frame

Any frame which is received and which is less than 64 bytes is illegal, and is called a "runt". In most cases, such frames arise from a collision, and while they indicate an illegal reception, they may be observed on correctly functioning networks. A receiver must discard all runt frames.

Giant Frame

Any frame which is received and which is greater than the maximum frame size, is called a "giant". In theory, the jabber control circuit in the transceiver should prevent any node from generating such a frame, but certain failures in the physical layer may also give rise to over-sized Ethernet frames. Like runts, giants are discarded by an Ethernet receiver.

Jumbo Frame

Some modern Gigabit Ethernet NICs support frames that are larger than the traditional 1500 bytes specified by the IEEE. This new mode requires support by both ends of the link to support Jumbo Frames. Path MTU Discovery is required for a router to utilise this feature, since there is no other way for a router to determine that all systems on the end-to-end path will support these larger sized frames.

A Misaligned Frame

Any frame which does not contain an integral number of received bytes (bytes) is also illegal. A receiver has no way of knowing which bits are legal, and how to compute the CRC-32 of the frame. Such frames are therefore also discarded by the Ethernet receiver.

Other Issues

The Ethernet standard dictates a minimum size of frame, which requires at least 46 bytes of data to be present in every MAC frame. If the network layer wishes to send less than 46 bytes of data the MAC protocol adds sufficient number of zero bytes (0x00, is also known as null padding characters) to satisfy this requirement. The maximum size of data which may be carried in a MAC frame using Ethernet is 1500 bytes (this is known as the MTU in IP).

A protocol known as the "Address Resolution Protocol" (arp) is used to identify the MAC source address of remote computers when IP is used over an Ethernet LAN.

Exception to the Rule

An extension to Ethernet, known as IEEE 802.1p allows for frames to carry a tag. The tag value adds an extra level of PCI to the Ethernet frame header. This increases the size of the total MAC frame when the tag is used. A side effect of this is that NICs and network devices designed to support this extension require a modification to the jabber detection circuit.

See also

Calculations involving Ethernet

CSMA/CD and Ethernet Transmit Algorithm


Ethernet Packet Decodes

IP packet processing

MAC Address Assignment

Manchester Coding

Network Interface Cards

Gorry Fairhurst - Date: 10/03/2009 EG3567