A docking device includes a bus interface and a network interface controller. The bus interface is configured to be connected to a host device. The network interface controller is coupled to the bus interface and configured to receive a host-based MAC address of the host device and load the host-based MAC address for a network communication, if the host device is connected to the docking device via the bus interface. The host-based MAC address is stored in a table with a vendor specific format structure in a BIOS of the host device.