Don t Forget ARP

Don't Forget ARP

Address Resolution Protocol, or ARP, is the protocol used to link a physical device such as a network card to an IP address. Network devices use a 48-bit address (known as a MAC address) that is unique across all devices in a given segment. Although sometimes devices have the same MAC address, this is quite rare within the same network segment.

When capturing traffic in a network, you will encounter ARP packets at varying frequencies as devices locate one another as they pass traffic. ARP requests are broadcast so that all devices will see them. However, most ARP replies are unicast so that only the requesting device will see the reply. ARP traffic is not normally passed between network segments. Therefore, a router can be configured to provide proxy ARP service so that it can answer for ARP requests in multiple network segments.