Whats the difference between an adapter and a network interface?

Question

Having a hard time understanding the MSDN documentation on the IP Helper Functions. Whats the difference between an adapter and a network interface?

score 37 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 28 '10 at 18:05

37

An "Adapter" is a piece of hardware.

A "network interface" is a software construct.

Usually, there is one network interface per adapter.

But there may be network interfaces which are not from an adapter.

And there may be multiple interfaces per adapter.

answered Dec 28 '10 at 18:05

John Saunders

160,644
26
247
397

"And there may be multiple interfaces per adapter." Is it for virtual interfaces on e.g. virtual machines, or there may be other cases which a network adapter can have multiple interface. – I.K. Sep 30 '19 at 07:13

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 28 '10 at 18:09

7

The MSDN docs are quite large. Here is a quote from the Managing Interfaces section that might help clear things up:

There is a one-to-one correspondence between the interfaces and adapters on a given computer. An interface is an IP-level abstraction, whereas an adapter is a datalink-level abstraction.

answered Dec 28 '10 at 18:09

Error 454

7,255
2
33
48

In Windows, the Adapter holds all the network addresses, even for multiple interfaces. – unixman83 Dec 28 '10 at 18:29

Whats the difference between an adapter and a network interface?

2 Answers2