Difference in Packets and Frames in Computer Networking

Difference between Packets and Frames?

These two words (Packets and Frames) are commonly used in the networking world. A packet is the PDU - protocol delivery unit at layer 3 (network layer) of the networking OSI model or you can say the WAN. You may have heard them referred to as IP packets. This is the organization of your data at layer 3.

A frame is the PDU of layer 2 (data link) of the OSI model on a LAN. At layer 2, packets get encapsulated into frames so that they can be transferred over different media to the end destination. Still the same data it could be split up differently due to varying window size, but there are a few different details added into the frame header.

More on Packets and Frames

Encapsulated unit build at the network layer is called packets. One packet which is most of them common is IP address which have source and destination address, containing control information or other may e flags and services. Hence known those packages have something logic information how to perform work.

Ethernet frames are most commonly encountered in the frames having information of MAC Address either of source or destination you can say. So the physical addresses are contains in those frames.

It is worth noting that a packet is encapsulated within a frame and hence the packet would always form the data part of the frame. For a transmitting host, data is first encapsulated within the packet, which is further encapsulated in a frame. This is then sent out over the physical layer as a bit stream.

For a receiving host, the physical bit stream is picked up, translated into a frame and the frame headers are stripped off (decapsulated), thereby retrieving the packet, which is then further decapsulated to retrieve higher layer information.