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How ARP Works
When an incoming packet destined for a host machine on a particular local area network arrives at a gateway, the gateway asks the ARP program to find a physical host or MAC address that matches the IP address. The ARP program looks in the ARP cache and, if it finds the address, provides it so that the packet can be converted to the right packet length and format and sent to the machine. If no entry is found for the IP address, ARP broadcasts a request packet in a special format to all the machines on the LAN to see if one machine knows that it has that IP address associated with it. A machine that recognizes the IP address as its own returns a reply so indicating. ARP updates the ARP cache for future reference and then sends the packet to the MAC address that replied.Since protocol details differ for each type of local area network, there are separate ARP Requests for Comments (RFC) for Ethernet, ATM, Fiber Distributed-Data Interface, HIPPI, and other protocols.
There is a Reverse ARP (RARP) for host machines that don't know their IP address. RARP enables them to request their IP address from the gateway's ARP cache.
Contributor(s): Kevin Beamer and Mariusz Zydyk
This was last updated in August 2000