Canonical vs Non-canonical
Canonical Form
Canonical form(also known as "LSB format" and "Ethernet format") is the name given to the format of a LAN adapter address as it should be presented to the user according to the 802 LAN standard. It is best defined as how the bit order of an adapter address on the LAN media maps to the bit order of an adapter address in memory: The first bit of each byte that appears on the LAN maps to the least significant(i.e., right-most) bit of each byte in memory (the figure below illustrates this). This puts the group address indicator (i.e., the bit that defines whether an address is unicast or multicast) in the least significant bit of the first byte. Ethernet and 802.3 hardware behave consistently with this definition. Unfortunately, Token Ring (and some FDDI) hardware does not behave consistently with this definition; it maps the first bit of each byte of the adapter address to the most significant(i.e., left-most) bit of each byte in memory, which puts the group address indicator in the most significant bit of the first byte. This mapping is variously called "MSB format", "IBM format", "Token-Ring format", and "non-canonical form".
The figure below illustrates the difference between canonical and canonicalform using the canonical form address 12-34-56-78-9A-BC as an example:
In memory, 12 34 56 78 9A BC
canonical: 00010010 00110100 01010110 01111000 10011010 10111100
non-canonical: 01001000 00101100 01101010 00011110 01011001 00111101
48 2C 6A 1E 59 3D
Canonical form(also known as "LSB format" and "Ethernet format") is the name given to the format of a LAN adapter address as it should be presented to the user according to the 802 LAN standard. It is best defined as how the bit order of an adapter address on the LAN media maps to the bit order of an adapter address in memory: The first bit of each byte that appears on the LAN maps to the least significant(i.e., right-most) bit of each byte in memory (the figure below illustrates this). This puts the group address indicator (i.e., the bit that defines whether an address is unicast or multicast) in the least significant bit of the first byte. Ethernet and 802.3 hardware behave consistently with this definition. Unfortunately, Token Ring (and some FDDI) hardware does not behave consistently with this definition; it maps the first bit of each byte of the adapter address to the most significant(i.e., left-most) bit of each byte in memory, which puts the group address indicator in the most significant bit of the first byte. This mapping is variously called "MSB format", "IBM format", "Token-Ring format", and "non-canonical form".
The figure below illustrates the difference between canonical and canonicalform using the canonical form address 12-34-56-78-9A-BC as an example:
In memory, 12 34 56 78 9A BC
canonical: 00010010 00110100 01010110 01111000 10011010 10111100
non-canonical: 01001000 00101100 01101010 00011110 01011001 00111101
48 2C 6A 1E 59 3D
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