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NIC recognition of multiple MAC addresses

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Weaver:
Can the average Ethernet NIC hardware ‘recognise’ / ‘watch out for’ multiple MAC addresses, in hardware? And if so, does this commonly happen?

Sorry for my ignorance about networking hardware.  :-[

So say it has it’s own MAC address 11:22:33:44:55:66 and will wake up if it hears that being mentioned.

But aside from just being its own normal distinct self, say it also wants to respond in others role as a multicast member of ‘all x’s’ with other MAC address used in these roles. It seems to me that it might want to listen out for several MAC addresses, no?

Can our hardware listen out for a certain number of MAC addresses ? How many?

This is a finite hardware resource, so an o/s may want to know what the limit is, and may have to have some kind of plan on how to struggle through if more MAC address matches are desired than can be supported by the storage in the hardware. Is that correct? So what would an o/s designer do? Listen out for everything and take the performance hit of waking up for all the irrelevant packets? Or would some bit mask facilities in the hardware help? (Depends on the spread/distribution of the desired matches.)

[Moderator edited to fix the iPad generated typo.]

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