: Difference between private address and Mac address
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MAC address is a hard coded number owned by no other device. A private address is an address assigned to you by a router.
[Obligatory Mr. Robot meme](https://www.reddit.com/r/MrRobot/comments/9loizq/i_dont_watch_new_shows_much_there_are_just_way/).
A MAC address is a hardware limited number associated with your network card. It uses hexadecimal, with 16 digits, 0-9 plus A,B,C,D,E,F. The MAC looks like this: FF:FF:FF:00:00:00, with the first 3 sections as a specific network card manufacturer designation, then the last 3 sections being specific to your network card. (Do note that certain operating systems can “randomize” or spoof a fake MAC address for security reasons. Namely Linux and Android can do this.)
Your private internal IP address is what is used to communicate with other devices on your local network. These can be 192.168.x.x, 172.16.x.x, or 10.x.x.x. These addresses are specifically reserved for local networks and will not work on the internet.
There is also some other special reserved addresses, like 127.0.0.1, which is a loopback address. If you ping this address, you are pinging yourself. Commonly referred to as your “home” address.
There is also [APIPA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-local_address#IPv4) which will give you a 169.254.x.x IP address, when there is no DHCP server available on your local network.
This isn’t even considering IPv4, as detailed above, versus IPv6.
A private address likely refers to a private IP Address.
All networked devices have both an IP and a MAC address.
MAC addressees are layer 2 while IP addresses are layer 3 in the OSI model.
MAC addresses are globally unique identifiers that are hard-coded in the hardware.
Every port you can plug a network cable into has its own factory set mac-address.
MAC addresses are sued to send data inside a network.
If there is a router between you and the destination the MAC address will only be used to communicate with the nearest router and the destination will never see it.
IP addresses are used to send data to places both inside your local network and beyond your local network. Routers use IPs to route traffic.
There is a subset of IP-addresses that can only be used locally and will not be routed across the wider internet. They can still be used to communicate between different local networks, but not to communicate to the world at large.
Those addresses are private and they don’t have to be globally unique at all.
Due to the number of IPv4 Addresses being limited it is common to do something called NATting and use those private IPs in your local home or business and have the router that connects your local home replace them all with a single public IP when sending out traffic to the internet.
If your home network consists of just a single network your private IP and MAC function very similarly.
If you have a bigger setup you may have your home divided into different networks that can communicate with each other with their private IPs but not their MAC addresses.
An example of a MAC address is 01:23:45:ab:cd:ef – 6 bytes usually written in hexadecimal 6 pairs of characters that can be 0-9 and a-f
An example of an IPv4 would be 142.250.186.174 – 4 bytes written in 4 decimal numbers from 0 to 255
A private IPv4 address can take the from of 192.168.x.y where x and y can be any number from 0 to 255 an 1 to 254 respectively.
There are also IPv6 addresses are 16 bytes long and written in hex like the MAC addresses usually with groups of zeros replaced by a double colon.
Have a look at this support article from Apple. MAC addresses can be “spoofed” for many reasons including privacy.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211227
The MAC address is the physical address of your network interface. Think of this as a street address of a house.
The IP address (private or not makes no difference) is a number assigned to that physical interface. Think of it as a person who lives at the street address.
If the house is still there, the street address remains the same. The same goes for the MAC address, it basically stays the same.
The person living there can change. So can the IP address, it is temporary, compared to the street address.
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