Advance Computer Networks

Spring 2020-21
Lect. #09

Prof. Suchismita Chinara

Dept. of Computer Science Engg.
National Institute of Technology Rourkela-769008
Email: suchismita@nitrkl.ac.in
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Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)
• Though IP address is used to identify a host in the network, the actual
communication happens over Physical address (MAC address).
• Thus, the protocol that is used to translate IP address to physical
address is called the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP).

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Protocols of Network Layer
• ARP is one of the sister protocols of IP.

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ARP
• A logical address is an Internet address. It’s jurisdiction is
universal, a logical address is unique universally.
• A physical address is a local address. It’s jurisdiction is a local
network, it should be unique locally.
• The address resolution protocol maps a logical address to a
physical address.

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ARP Request (broadcast) / Reply (unicast)

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How does ARP function?
• The Sender asks the receiver to announce its physical address
when needed.

• ARP is designed to this purpose.

• Anytime, a host(router) needs to find the physical address of

another host(router) on its network, it sends an ARP Request and
the query packet is broadcast over the network.

• Host will ignore the ARP request, if the IP address is not the host.
Otherwise the host will reply to the sender.
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• Every host(router) on the network receives and processes the
ARP query packet.

• But only the intended recipient recognizes its IP address and

sends back an ARP Reply.

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Example ARP

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Format of ARP Packet

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ARP packet description
• Hardware type: This is a 16-bit field defining the type of the
network on which ARP is running.

• Protocol Type: This is a 16-bit field defining the protocol.

• Hardware length: This is an 8-bit field defining the length of the

physical address in bytes.(6 bytes for Ethernet)

• Protocol length: This is an 8-bit field defining the length of the

logical address in bytes.(4 bytes for IP address)
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ARP packet description
• Operation: This is a 16-bit field defining the type of the
packet. (why 16 bit ?)
• Sender hardware address: This is a variable-length field defining
the physical address of the sender.
• Sender protocol address: This is a variable-length field defining
the protocol address of the sender.
• Target hardware address: This is a variable-length field defining
the physical address of the target. For ARP request is field is all
0s, because the sender foes not know the physical address of
the target.
• Target protocol address: This is a variable-length field defining
the protocol address of the target.
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Encapsulation of ARP packet

HDLC Frame Format

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The ARP Process
• The sender knows the IP address of the target.
• IP asks ARP to create an ARP request packet.
• The packet is encapsulated in a frame using the physical
broadcast address (All FFs MAC address) as the destination
address.
• All machines except the one targeted drop the packet.
• The target machine replies with an ARP Reply Packet containing
its physical address. This packet is unicast.
• The sender receives the reply packet.
• The IP datagram is now encapsulated in a frame and is unicast
to the target machine.
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ARP functionality for different cases
• CASE-1: The sender is a host and wants to send a packet to another
host on the same network.
• Use ARP to find another host’s physical address

CASE-2: The sender is a host and wants to send a packet to another

host on another network.
• Sender looks at its routing table.
• Find the IP address of the next hop (router) for this destination.
• Use ARP to find the router’s physical address

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ARP functionality for different cases
• CASE-3: the sender is a router and received a datagram destined for a
host on another network.
• Router check its routing table.
• Find the IP address of the next router.
• Use ARP to find the next router’s physical address.

• CASE-4: The sender is a router that has received a datagram destined

for a host in the same network.
• Use ARP to find this host’s physical address.

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 Ex: ARP for different Cases

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ARP Request / Reply details

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