IP and MAC addresses

IP and MAC addresses

1. IP addresses

   • IP addresses are used when sending data between TCP/IP networks.
   • Unlike mac addresses IP addresses aren't linked to specific hardware. Ip addresses get assigned either manually or automatically before the device can access the network.
   • Static and Dynamic IP addresses
     • Static IP addresses are permanent addresses. These types of IP are mostly used in hosting websites on the internet, they are used here because if you are going onto a website you wouldn't want the address changing each time you would access it.
     • Dynamic IP address is assigned to the node by a network server, this happens when the node enters the network. This means that the same node could have a different IP address each time that it logs onto the network.
   • IP addresses can either be a 32-bit or a 128-bit binary number, there are more vaired compared to a MAC address.
     • These binary numbers are also converted but this time they get converted differently. 128-bit numbers are converted into eight hexidecimal numbers while 32-bit ones are converted into four denary numbers
       • The maximum number that a ip address can be is 255 this is because the maximum nuber binary can be is 255
   • Each IP address has 4 seperate numbers.

2. Mac addresses

   • MAC addresses are used on every network enabled device to identify between different devices
   • Compared to IP addresses a mac address gets assigned to a specific piece of hardware, This is because in the manurfacturing stage a NIC for example will have a mac address asigned to it so that it is ideentified
   • MAC addresses are 48 or 64-bit binary numbers,
     • To make it easier to use these binary numbers are converted into Hexadecimal values which are the numbers and letters you see all MAC addresses as.
   • MAC address stands for (Machine Access Control)

3. Mac addresses are just used for the network that they are on Whereas the ip address is the link between your computer and the internet.

4. A IP address is a set of four number that are split into 8 bits

   • IP addresses can be made of a maximum of 12 digits split into 4 which can be a maximum of 255 bits, this is because 8 bit binary only goes up to 255