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A pretty dumb question. But I dont know the answer.

When we have unique hardware address what is the need of IP address?

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I believe that anyone working as a system administrator or related IT professional should understand the purpose of an IP address so well that the question couldn't possibly be on topic for this site. – John Gardeniers May 23 '11 at 12:37
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closed as off topic by John Gardeniers, Iain♦, jscott, Chopper3 May 23 '11 at 12:38

Questions on Server Fault are expected to generally relate to servers, networking, or desktop infrastructure, within the scope defined in the faq.

2 Answers

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One of the main ones I can think of is that an IP address, together with its netmask, contains information that lets it be routeable (you can find out its network) - so given an IP address you can find out how to reach it.

Hardware (MAC) and IP addresses belong to diferent layers of the ISO/OSI model.

With all due respect this seems like a homework question though, I'm not sure this is the place for it. But I'm new so I'll let someone else be the judge.

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Because network protocols are organized in a hierarchical way, and TCP/IP operates at a different level than Ethernet, serves different purposes and is handled in a different way. Also, because you could habe IP addressing in a non-Ethernet network (thus no MAC addresses at all), or even (less common these days) an Ethernet network running non-IP protocols (thus no IP addresses at all).

More (actually, lots of) info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model

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