The answer to this question is wrong: > Why don't we just make IP networks without Ethernet? The article implies that we need MACs, and of course we don't, an

The answer to this question is wrong: > Why don't we just make IP networks without Ethernet? The article implies that we need MACs, and of course we don't, and lots of protocols exist that don't use ethernet framing. SLIP and PPP only speak IPv4, for example. Also the real reason behind the "why" is more boring than the blog implies. Ethernet predates IP. It's a simple (almost the simplest possible) protocol for a bunch of hosts to share a single network without running into trouble talking to each other. And it decided on a hardware-unique "MAC" as its way of doing addressing. It was simple, so it was cheap. So everyone built out cheap ethernet hardware. And when it arrived, everyone wanted to run IP on their cheap ethernets.