The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a network protocol, which maps a network layer protocol address to a data link layer hardware address. For example, ARP is used to resolve IP address to the corresponding Ethernet address.
ARP belongs to the OSI data link layer (Layer 2). ARP protocol is implemented by the network protocol driver. ARP packets are encapsulated by Ethernet headers and transmitted.
A host in an Ethernet network can communicate with another host, only if it knows the Ethernet address (MAC address) of that host. The higher level protocols like IP use a different kind of addressing scheme (like IP address) from the lower level hardware addressing scheme like MAC address. ARP is used to get the Ethernet address of a host from its IP address. ARP is extensively used by all the hosts in an Ethernet network.
The length of a MAC address is 6 bytes and the length of an IP address is 4 bytes. Obviously, the MAC address cannot be represented using the IP address. So an IP address must be mapped to the corresponding MAC address.
ARP is a general protocol, which can be used in any type of broadcast network. The fields in the ARP packet specify the type of the MAC address and the type of the protocol address. ARP is used with most IEEE 802.x Local Area Networking (LAN) media. In particular, it is also used with FDDI, Token Ring, and Fast Ethernet, in precisely the same way as it is with Ethernet.
When ARP needs to resolve a given IP address to Ethernet address, it broadcasts an ARP request packet. The ARP request packet contains the source MAC address and the source IP address and the destination IP address. Each host in the local network receives this packet. The host with the specified destination IP address sends an ARP reply packet to the originating host with its MAC and IP address.
The format of an ARP message is shown below:
ARP maintains the mapping between IP address and MAC address in a table in memory called ARP cache. The entries in this table are dynamically added and removed. A host will update its ARP cache, only if the ARP request is for its IP address. Otherwise, it will discard the ARP request.
