UPSC Articles
Mac-binding
Part of: GS Prelims and GS-II- Governance; GS-III- Awareness in IT
In News:
- Use of Social media was allowed in Jammu & Kashmir but Internet connectivity is made available “with mac-binding”.
- Every device has a Media Access Control (MAC) address, a hardware identification number that is unique to it.
- While accessing the Internet, every device is assigned an IP address.
- Mac-binding essentially means binding together the MAC and IP addresses, so that all requests from that 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
- Also, monitoring authorities can trace the specific system from which a particular online activity was carried out
