An Ethernet card is used to help the computer or device connect to the Internet. These types of cards can also be known as a network interface card. The card itself can be inserted into a provided slot on today’s Motherboards. Store bought computers will almost always have a pre-built in Ethernet card for Internet access.

If it doesn’t, you should seriously reconsider the purchase. Computers that need to have Ethernet cards manually installed into them should come with driver software. If they don’t, surfing around the web to locate the drivers manually may be necessary plan of action that needs to be taken.

The drivers for Ethernet cards can usually be found on the hardware vendors site, but at other times needs to be downloaded from a 3^rd parties site. Be careful when looking for downloads, as some sites may advertise drivers but instead install viruses or other malware.

Each Ethernet card contains a special piece of information used in identifying the card. This identifier is known as a MAC address.

Originally, the Ethernet card was created in order to be able to transfer data between computers or devices within a LAN (Local Area Network).  Since then, they have become useful in connecting to the Internet, and have advanced in terms of general use. We now currently even have wireless Ethernet cards, which can connect to an source point (wireless router) and gain access to the Internet from there.

What is a MAC address?

Also known as an adapter address, hardware address, or physical address, a MAC address is a unique serial number on network adapters used to identify the device or computer. This is intended to be a permanent piece of information, however it may be changed via software such as the Technitium Mac Address Changer. The reason some people may want to change their MAC address is as follows: Sometimes when a website needs to ban a user from accessing it, they will choose to ban the IP address.

However, it’s quite easy to change your IP address via a web proxy or other similar trick, such as a VPN (Virtual Private Network). The next step they may take is to simply ban the accessing machine’s MAC address, which is supposed to be unchangeable. However, it is able to be changed, and is also known as MAC spoofing. MAC spoofing may also be used to impersonate other computers on the network, or be used to hide from the network all together.

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