A Media Access Control (MAC) address is a permanent hardware address burned into a device's network interface card. It functions to uniquely identify a device on a local network segment and facilitate direct data transfer between locally connected devices.

MAC Address

An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a logical address used to route data packets across multiple interconnected networks. IPv4 addresses use a numeric format (such as 192.168.1.5) yielding about 4 billion possible addresses, whereas IPv6 uses longer addresses to provide a vastly larger pool. Rather than pinpointing a physical location, an IP address designates a network or region, and multiple host devices can share a single public address via Network Address Translation (NAT).

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