Will MAC ADDRESS ever run out of combinations?

Question

Mac addresses is made of only 12 digits containing 0-F. So, will they eventually run out of combinations, since each computer has a unique physical address?

Answer 1

Unlikely, at least any time soon. There are 16^12=2.81E14 possible MAC addresses, which works out to about 40 thousand MAC addresses per person on Earth.

Answer 2

There is some concern that MAC addresses may be exhausted in about 80 years. The IEEE EUI-64 standard prevents such an event, which extends the size of MAC addresses from 48 bits to 64. Alternatively, hardware vendors may be able to simply recycle old MAC addresses from long-gone devices (e.g., junk over ~20 years old).