ARP Overview
If your network is using the IPv4 communications protocol, the Address Resolution Protocol, or ARP, is what you need to map IPv4 addresses to MAC addresses. This topic explains how ARP works.
Every IP device on an Ethernet network has a unique Ethernet MAC address. When a device sends an Ethernet Layer 2 frame, it contains these two addresses:
- Destination MAC address – The Ethernet MAC address of the destination device on the same local network segment. If the destination host is on another network, then the destination address in the frame would be that of the default gateway (i.e., router).
- Source MAC address – The MAC address of the Ethernet NIC on the source host.
The figure illustrates the problem when sending a frame to another host on the same segment on an IPv4 network.
To send a packet to another host on the same local IPv4 network, a host must know the IPv4 address and the MAC address of the destination device. Device destination IPv4 addresses are either known or resolved by device name. However, MAC addresses must be discovered.
A device uses Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) to determine the destination MAC address of a local device when it knows its IPv4 address.
ARP provides two basic functions:
- Resolving IPv4 addresses to MAC addresses
- Maintaining a table of IPv4 to MAC address mappings
ARP Functions
When a packet is sent to the data link layer to be encapsulated into an Ethernet frame, the device refers to a table in its memory to find the MAC address that is mapped to the IPv4 address. This table is stored temporarily in RAM memory and called the ARP table or the ARP cache.
The sending device will search its ARP table for a destination IPv4 address and a corresponding MAC address.
- If the packet’s destination IPv4 address is on the same network as the source IPv4 address, the device will search the ARP table for the destination IPv4 address.
- If the destination IPv4 address is on a different network than the source IPv4 address, the device will search the ARP table for the IPv4 address of the default gateway.
In both cases, the search is for an IPv4 address and a corresponding MAC address for the device.
Each entry, or row, of the ARP table binds an IPv4 address with a MAC address. We call the relationship between the two values a map. This simply means that you can locate an IPv4 address in the table and discover the corresponding MAC address. The ARP table temporarily saves (caches) the mapping for the devices on the LAN.
If the device locates the IPv4 address, its corresponding MAC address is used as the destination MAC address in the frame. If there is no entry is found, then the device sends an ARP request.
Removing Entries from an ARP Table
For each device, an ARP cache timer removes ARP entries that have not been used for a specified period of time. The times differ depending on the operating system of the device. For example, newer Windows operating systems store ARP table entries between 15 and 45 seconds, as illustrated in the figure.
ARP Tables on Networking Devices
On a Cisco router, the show ip arp command is used to display the ARP table, as shown in the figure.
R1# show ip arp Protocol Address Age (min) Hardware Addr Type Interface Internet 192.168.10.1 - a0e0.af0d.e140 ARPA GigabitEthernet0/0/0 Internet 209.165.200.225 - a0e0.af0d.e141 ARPA GigabitEthernet0/0/1 Internet 209.165.200.226 1 a03d.6fe1.9d91 ARPA GigabitEthernet0/0/1 R1#
On a Windows 10 PC, the arp –a command is used to display the ARP table, as shown in the figure.
C:\Users\PC> arp -a Interface: 192.168.1.124 --- 0x10 Internet Address Physical Address Type 192.168.1.1 c8-d7-19-cc-a0-86 dynamic 192.168.1.101 08-3e-0c-f5-f7-77 dynamic 192.168.1.110 08-3e-0c-f5-f7-56 dynamic 192.168.1.112 ac-b3-13-4a-bd-d0 dynamic 192.168.1.117 08-3e-0c-f5-f7-5c dynamic 192.168.1.126 24-77-03-45-5d-c4 dynamic 192.168.1.146 94-57-a5-0c-5b-02 dynamic 192.168.1.255 ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff static 224.0.0.22 01-00-5e-00-00-16 static 224.0.0.251 01-00-5e-00-00-fb static 239.255.255.250 01-00-5e-7f-ff-fa static 255.255.255.255 ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff static C:\Users\PC>
ARP Issues – ARP Broadcasts and ARP Spoofing
As a broadcast frame, an ARP request is received and processed by every device on the local network. On a typical business network, these broadcasts would probably have minimal impact on network performance. However, if a large number of devices were to be powered up and all start accessing network services at the same time, there could be some reduction in performance for a short period of time, as shown in the figure. After the devices send out the initial ARP broadcasts and have learned the necessary MAC addresses, any impact on the network will be minimized.
In some cases, the use of ARP can lead to a potential security risk. A threat actor can use ARP spoofing to perform an ARP poisoning attack. This is a technique used by a threat actor to reply to an ARP request for an IPv4 address that belongs to another device, such as the default gateway, as shown in the figure. The threat actor sends an ARP reply with its own MAC address. The receiver of the ARP reply will add the wrong MAC address to its ARP table and send these packets to the threat actor.
Enterprise level switches include mitigation techniques known as dynamic ARP inspection (DAI). DAI is beyond the scope of this course.
