tcp-ip ARP: Address Resolution Protocol

When an Ethernet frame is sent from one host on a LAN to another, it is the 48-bit Ethernet address that determines for which interface the frame is destined. The device driver software never looks at the destination IP address in the IP datagram.

Address resolution provides a mapping between the two different forms of addresses: 32-bit IP addresses and whatever type of address the data link uses.

ARP provides a dynamic mapping from an IP address to the corresponding hardware address. We use the term dynamic since it happens automatically and is normally not a concern of either the application user or the system administrator.

RARP is used by systems without a disk drive (normally diskless workstations or X terminals) but requires manual configuration by the system administrator.

ARP Cache

This cache maintains the recent mappings from Internet addresses to hardware addresses. A timeout is normally provided for entries in the ARP cache.

command : arp -a

Proxy ARP

Proxy ARP lets a router answer ARP requests on one of its networks for a host on another of its networks. This fools the sender of the ARP request into thinking that the router is the destination host, when in fact the destination host is "on the other side" of the router. The router is acting as a proxy agent for the destination host, relaying packets to it from other hosts.

Gratuitous ARP

It occurs when a host sends an ARP request looking for its own IP address. This is usually done when the interface is configured at bootstrap time. Gratuitous ARP provides two features.

1. It lets a host determine if another host is already configured with the same IP address. The host is not expecting a reply to this request. But if a reply is received, the error message "duplicate IP address sent from Ethernet address: a:b:c:d:e:f" is logged on the console. This is a warning to the system administrator that one of the systems is misconfigured.
2. If the host sending the gratuitous ARP has just changed its hardware address (perhaps the host was shut down, the interface card replaced, and then the host was rebooted), this packet causes any other host on the cable that has an entry in its cache for the old hardware address to update its ARP cache entry accordingly.

RARP: Reverse Address Resolution Protocol

Each system on a network has a unique hardware address, assigned by the manufacturer of the network interface. The principle of RARP is for the diskless system to read its unique hardware address from the interface card and send an RARP request (a broadcast frame on the network) asking for someone to reply with the diskless system's IP address (in an RARP reply).

RARP Servers as User Processes

The complication with an RARP server is that the server normally provides the mapping from a hardware address to an IP address for many hosts (all the diskless systems on the network). This mapping is contained in a disk file (normally /etc/ethers on Unix systems). Since kernels normally don't read and parse disk files, the function of an RARP server is provided as a user process, not as part of the kernel's TCP/IP implementation.

To further complicate matters, RARP requests are transmitted as Ethernet frames with a specific Ethernet frame type field (0x8035)。 This means an RARP server must have some way of sending and receiving Ethernet frames of this type.

Multiple RARP Servers per Network

Another complication is that RARP requests are sent as hardware-level broadcasts. This means they are not forwarded by routers. To allow diskless systems to bootstrap even when the RARP server host is down, multiple RARP servers are normally provided on a single network (e.g., a single cable).

As the number of servers increases (to provide redundancy), the network traffic increases, since every server sends an RARP reply for every RARP request. The diskless system that sent the RARP request normally uses the first RARP reply that it receives.