User:AnuragT/Compare MAC,IP and DNS

Comparison

AIM/Primary Function

DNS – Translation of Internet domain names into IP numbers via a "DNS Server" that performs this kind of translation.

IP- IP by itself is something like the postal system. It allows you to address a package and drop it in the system, but there’s no direct link between you and the recipient.

MAC- Network functionality is subdivided into layers (TCP/IP and other mainstream networking architectures, speaking generally) MAC addresses allow computers to uniquely (theoretically!) identify themselves on a network at this relatively low level (as they function at the data link layer).

Implementation

DNS - DNS is implemented using two software components: the DNS server and the DNS client. DNS is part of the Application Layer of the TCP/IP reference model.

IP- IP addressing functions at the Network Layer. IP address changes as the network device moves from one network to another.

MAC- MAC addressing works at the Data Link Layer. The MAC address generally remains fixed and follows the network device.

Advantages of IP

MAC addresses, unlike IP Addresses, are not divided into "host" and "network" portions. Therefore, a host cannot determine from the MAC address of another host whether that host is on the same layer 2 network segment as the sending host or a network segment bridged to that network segment.

MAC address is hardware related. It identifies the "machine". It can't be changed without exchanging the part (at least ethically!). The IP number identifies the "computer" in a "network". You can give the computer different "addresses".

IP being an logical arrangement and therefore easier to work with tracing the right host and forwarding packets while MAC addresses are quite random, each switch would have to memorize every single last MAC of every device reachable on every port on a global scale in order for packet switching to operate.

Disadvantage of IP

Latency introduced by waiting for acknowledgements.

There is also significant overhead in each packet to accommodate all the tcp/ip metadata. The main disadvantage of TCP is its success!! It's now easier to work around TCP limitations, than to propose a better protocol.

Advantage of MAC

MAC filtering has one advantage over all other security methods. Because it does not involve any data encryption, MAC filtering has no packet overhead and thus does not have any performance impact on network traffic or bandwidth

Disadvantage of MAC

However, this increase in performance may not be worth the poorer security. MAC addresses can be spoofed (masked by something else) through software on almost every platform.

Advantage of DNS

User-friendly compared to IP addresses for online navigation, It's like your computer's GPS for the Internet. Achieves transparency without losing scalability.

Disadvantage of DNS

The database management will pose a challenge as the number of hosts increase leading to more processing time.