(ARP) Address Resolution Protocol
ARP: Bridging Layer 3 Addressing to Layer 2 Addressing
The Address Resolution Protocol is a communication protocol used for discovering the link layer address, such as a MAC address, associated with a given internet layer address, typically an IPv4 address. This mapping is a critical function in the Internet protocol suite
This mapping procedure is important because the lengths of the IP and MAC addresses differ, and a translation is needed so that the systems can recognize one another. The most used IP today is IP version 4 (IPv4). An IP address is 32 bits long. However, MAC addresses are 48 bits long. ARP translates the 32-bit address to 48 and vice versa.
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