Q & A on The Difference Between Hardware and IP Addresses Q: My question is that what's the difference between a hardware address and IP address. A: As the name implies, a hardware address is understood by the underlying hardware. For example, Ethernet hardware understands 48-bit Ethernet addresses. An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a 32-bit number assigned to a computer in addition to the computer's hardware address. IP addresses are globally known throughout the Internet; protocol software in routers uses the IP address in a datagram to forward the datagram to its destination.