A MAC address is a Media Access Control address. It has two parts, the manufacturer, and the manufacturer’s unique number. For example on my laptop I have an Ethernet socket. I can see from a wireshark trace that a packet is being broadcast with Ethernet address MicroStarInt_e9:31:2a, or 00 d8 61 e9 31 2a in hex. This was created by Micro Start international.

On a different machine the address is LCFCHeFE 36:f4:8a or 8c 16 45 36 f4 8a. This Ethernet adapter has been provided by LCFC Electronics technology, with serial number 36f48a.

Within an Ethernet switch, there are various broadcasts to devices on the switch, such as

ff02::1	all nodes
ff02::2	all routers
ff02::5	all OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) routers

Using wireshark I can see a broadcast with code ff02::2 which is an IPV6 router Solicitation request from 8c:16:45:36:f4:8a. This is basically saying “have any routers been configured on this Ethernet network, if so, please tell me”. I can map the 8c:16:45:36:f4:8a back to the Ethernet adapter LCFCHeFE 36:f4:8a.

Wireshark has logic to map the Ethernet address prefix to the manufacturer, and convert 8c:16:45 to LCFCHeFE.