Relationship Between Ethernet and TCPIP

Ethernet is a physical thing. It's about wires, voltages and connectors.

IP is about how messages get routed from place to place. When the data leaves my computer, how does it know to how to get to Google?
TCP is about making sure the conversation has some rules about how to talk to each other, including making sure messages don't get lost along the way.

Sending data using the TCP/IP protocol suite over Ethernet is known as "Ethernet TCP/IP."Another way to look at it; if you make a telephone call you get an awful lot accomplished. You're sending data to someone far away, and he's receiving it. But if they speak Mandarin and you speak French neither of you will get much out of the conversation. "Ethernet" is like the phone lines. An "IP address" is like a phone number. "TCP" is like the language.Ethernet does not need TCP/IP, and vice versa.Ethernet is defined by IEEE 802.3 standard, that is also ISO 8802-3. This defines the physical (layer 1) and the MAC (media access control) part of the data link layer (layer 2). These are the lowest layers of the OSI 7-layer communications stack.

TCP/IP refers to the full suite of protocols defined for the Internet by the IETF (Internet engineering task force), the standards body for the Internet. TCP refers to a protocol used at layer 4 of the OSI stack (transportation), and IP refers to Internet protocol defined at layer 3 of the OSI stack. Actually, TCP/IP includes many other protocols, some of which are at the top of the OSI stack, the Application layer.

This protocol layering is done to allow the upper layers to be implemented on any lower layer. For example, Ethernet is only one such lower layer, but IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n is another lower layer that happens to be wireless. Both support TCP/IP.