A talk about how computers communicate to one another, using IP addresses (IPv4 & IPv6) and MAC addresses.
For privacy reasons a MAC address can now be locally administered - which means it will be (pseudo)randomised. How do we ensure two devices on the same network don't happen to locally administer the same address?
This is similar to the Birthday Problem - in a room of N people, how likely is it to have two who have the same birthday?
The number of possible MAC addresses is huge compared to the number of days in a year, so using the same formula pushes the values beyond the capability of a pocket calculator. A taylor series expansion can be used to approximate the answer.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/its-time-stop-our-mathematics-students-from-playing-memory-andrew