MAC address:
MAC (Media Access Control or a Medium Access Control) address, a media access control for the translation, or called a physical address, hardware address, used to define the location of a network device.
IP Address:
IP address is the Internet Protocol address (in English: Internet Protocol Address, also translated as Internet Protocol address) is the IP Address of abbreviations. IP address is a uniform address format of the IP protocol provides, assign it a logical address for each network on the Internet and each host in order to mask the differences in the physical address.
The difference between the two:
1, MAC address is a physical address, IP address is a logical address. What does this mean? MAC address is immutable, IP addresses can be changed;
2, MAC address is unique, each hardware factory when the MAC address is fixed; IP address does not have the uniqueness, therefore, many applications are built around MAC addresses.
3, different working levels. Frame Forwarding data frame based on MAC address, IP address based on three forwards packets. Switcher forward data based on the MAC address table, the router forwards the data based on routing table (IP address).
4, define different lengths. MAC address is the address of the Ethernet card with a length of 48 bits; the IP address of the current mainstream are 32 bits long.
IP address and MAC address linked together by the ARP protocol.