What is the difference between a media access control address and an IP address? How can I distinguish one from another?
A. A media access control (MAC) address is a unique, 12-digit (48-bit), hexadecimal number that the network interface card (NIC) manufacturer “burns into” a computer’s network interface card. On some cards, software can override this number, but the number remains burned into the card. MAC addresses are also referred to as “Hardware Addresses” and “Universally Administered Addresses” (UAAs). When they are overridden, MAC addresses are called “Locally Administered Addresses” (LAAs). The media access control is the lowest layer of the network model that contains address information. All frames on a local area network contain a MAC address, regardless of the network protocol in the frame. The same cannot be said about Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which reside at a higher level of the network model. Non-IP traffic, such as traffic that uses the Novell IPX/SPX protocol, have a MAC address but not an IP address. An IP address is a 32-bit address that should be unique across a Transmissi
