Re: MAC Address vs IP Address Purpose.

MAC addresses serve as destination IDs on common media.
As such, they need to be unique, but there are a small number
you end up talking to, so you can keep a map by extension.
(i.e. a table)
NIC vendor provided uniqueness makes life easier.

IP addresses serve as destination IDs on your whole networked domain.
As such, its size makes impractical to keep a map and we use prefixes
to do routing and summarization.

I guess summarization and discovery are key to the features.

-Carlos

CCIE KID @ 17/12/2011 15:47 -0300 dixit:
> Hi fellas,
>
> Over the years i have been in this field and i know the use of IP Address
> and MAC address.
>
> How is MAC address purpose different from IP address purpose with respect
> to a WAN and a LAN ?
>
> I know we have to map a physical Address with our logical address for
> communicating to any other host.
>
> But what does exactly the purpose of MAC add IP address ?
>
> Can anyone be very specific with the answer?
>
>

-- 
Carlos G Mendioroz  <tron_at_huapi.ba.ar>  LW7 EQI  Argentina
Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net