What is Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)?
The acronym ARP stands for Address Resolution Protocol which is one of the most important protocols of the Data link layer in the OSI model. It is responsible to find the hardware address of a host from a known IP address. There are three basic ARP terms.
Note: ARP finds the hardware address, also known as the Media Access Control (MAC) address, of a host from its known IP address.
How Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) Works?
When computer programs send or get messages, they usually use something called an IP address, which is like a virtual address. But underneath, the real talk happens using another type of address called a MAC address, which is like a device’s actual home address.
So, our goal is to find out the MAC address of where we want to talk to. That’s where ARP comes in handy. It helps by turning the IP address into the physical MAC address, so we can chat with other devices on the network
Most computer programs/applications use logical addresses (IP Addresses) to send/receive messages. However, the actual communication happens over the Physical Address (MAC Address) from layer 2 of the OSI model. So our mission is to get the destination MAC Address which helps communicate with other devices. This is where ARP comes into the picture; its functionality is to translate IP addresses into physical addresses.