Tcp Ip Protocol Questions Medium
The purpose of the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) in the TCP/IP Protocol is to resolve or map an IP address to a physical or MAC address on a local network.
In TCP/IP networks, devices communicate with each other using IP addresses. However, in order to send data packets over the network, devices need to know the physical or MAC address of the destination device. This is where ARP comes into play.
When a device wants to send data to another device on the same local network, it first checks its ARP cache, which is a table that stores IP-to-MAC address mappings of devices it has recently communicated with. If the MAC address is found in the ARP cache, the device can directly send the data packet to the destination device.
If the MAC address is not found in the ARP cache, the device sends an ARP request broadcast message to all devices on the network, asking the device with the specified IP address to respond with its MAC address. The device with the matching IP address then replies with an ARP reply message, providing its MAC address. The requesting device then updates its ARP cache with the new IP-to-MAC address mapping and can now send the data packet to the destination device.
In summary, ARP helps in the translation of IP addresses to MAC addresses, allowing devices on a local network to communicate with each other efficiently.