August 01, 2022 / 61 /

Difference Between Packets and Frames In Networking

Generally, packets and frames are almost the same but are given different names based on the layer they reside at.

In order words, both packet and frames deals with a unit of data called bits.

The way I like to think of these two terms is;

Packets are streams of bits, while Frames are composed of packets.

Difference between packet and frame

	Packets	Frames
1	A packet is composed of streams of bits packed to form a packet	A frame is composed of packets of (bits) packed into frames
2	A packet resides on layer 3 which is the network layer of the OSI model	A Frame resides on layer 2 which is the data link layer of the OSI model
3	The packet which can be found on the network layer is the IP packet which consist of both source and destination address	The Frame which can be found on the data link layer is the Ethernet frame which consist of both source and destination MAC address