Wednesday, 11 November 2015

Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)


Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)



Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is used to find the MAC (Layer 2) address associated with an IP (Layer 3) Address or in other words Identify the Hardware Address associated with the Protocol Address (IP).

Is it a Layer 2 or Layer 3 Protocol? If you check the ARP packet we dont have a Layer 3/IP header, which means its a Layer 2 protocol. But if you check the ARP Data, we could see IP address.


Sample Captures:

ARP Request from 10.222.0.10 requesting the MAC address of 10.222.0.7



ARP Reply from 10.222.0.7 with its MAC address



Please leave your suggestions and questions as comments.