Internet is made of a combination of physical networks connected by
internetworking devices such as routers
Hosts and routers are recognized at the network level by their logical IP
addresses
Packets pass through physical networks to reach these hosts and routers
At the physical level, the hosts and routers are recognized by their physical
addresses
■ ARP is the protocol used to map IP address to MAC address.
The delivery of a packet to a host or a router requires two levels of addressing:
logical and physical.
We need to be able to map a logical address to its corresponding physical address
This can be done by using either static or dynamic mapping.
• Internet protocol is designed to as a best effort delivery protocol, but it
lacks some features such as flow control and error control.
• We need a protocol to create a mapping between physical and logical
address.
• • IP packets use logical address (host to host).
• But to the packets to travel from one node to another node physical
address is used.
• So we need to encapsulate the logical address with physical address, we
need set of protocols called ARP(address Resolution Protocol).
• • Similarly for reverse mapping: RARP, BOOTP and DHCP is used.
Address mapping
Physical address and logical address are two different identifiers.
• Mapping can be done in two ways
• Static mapping • Dynamic mapping
Static mapping
It involves the creation of routing tables that associates a logical address with
physical address.
It is stored in each machine on the network.
It has some limitations because physical address may change in the following
ways;
A machine could change its NIC, resulting in a new physical address.
In some LAN, the physical address changes every time when the computer
turned on (Apple).
Dynamic mapping
Each time a machine knows one of the two address (either logical or physical).
It can use a protocol to find the other one (either logical or physical).
from Address Resolution Protocol Map a logical address to a physical address
IPv4
RARP: Reverse Address Resolution Protocol Map a physical address to a logical
address
• In order to send the data to destination, IP address is necessary but not
sufficient;
• we also need the physical address of the destination machine.
• ARP is used to get the physical address (MAC address) of destination
machine.
• Address Resolution Protocol is a communication protocol used for
discovering physical address associated with given network address.
• Typically, ARP is a network layer to data link layer mapping process, which
is used to discover MAC address for given Internet Protocol Address.
• Before sending the IP packet, the MAC address of destination must be
known.
• If not so, then sender broadcasts the ARP-discovery packet requesting the
MAC address of intended destination.
• Since ARP-discovery is broadcast, every host inside that network will get
this message but the packet will be discarded by everyone except that
intended receiver host whose IP is associated.
• Now, this receiver will send a unicast packet with its MAC address (ARP-
reply) to the sender of ARP-discovery packet.
Let's say that Host A wants to communicate with host B. • Host A knows the IP
address of host B, but it doesn't know the host B's MAC address.
• In order to find out the MAC address of host B, host A sends an ARP request,
listing the host B's IP address as the destination IP address and the MAC address
of FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF (Ethernet broadcast).
• Switch will forward the frame out all interfaces (except the incoming
interface)
• Each device on the segment will receive the packet, but because the
destination IP address is host B's IP address, only host B will reply with the ARP
reply packet, listing its MAC address.
• Host A now has enough information to send the traffic to host B.e
What is physical address
• Physical address is a local address.
• It must be unique locally
• But its not necessarily unique universally
• Its called physical address
• Its implemented in hardware
• example MAC address in the ethernet protocol is imprinted on the
NIC installed in the host or router
ARP operation
ARP REPLY IS UNICAST
