ARP

Address Resolution Protocol operates in the Data Link layer, and is used to map IP addresses to MAC addresses within a local network. It allows devices to find the hardware address of another device on the same subnet when only the IP address is known.

It operates as follows:

• A request is sent to every other device in the network. This is known as Broadcast

• The device whose IP matches replies to the initial device with the MAC address

• The requesting device stores the result in its ARP cache for faster communication in the future