In an Ethernet local area network, however, addresses for attached devices are 48 bits long. For example, in IP Version 4, the most common level of IP in use today, an address is 32 bits long.

What is ARP in Networking?Īddress Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a protocol for mapping an Internet Protocol address (IP address) to a physical machine address that is recognized in the local network. This Method includes arp ing arp command its easy to find Find MAC address. This article shows how to find MAC address of any other networking device. Usually we can get our Own mac address by this command getmac. All popular network operating systems contain utility programs that allow one to find (and sometimes change) MAC address settings. The method used to find a MAC address depends on the type of network device involved. DHCP also usually relies on MAC addresses to manage the unique assignment of IP addresses to devices. ARP, the Address Resolution Protocol, supports the logic for obtaining this mapping and keeping the cache up to date. This mapping is known as the ARP cache or ARP table.

IP networks maintain a mapping (association) between the IP address of a device and its MAC address. The MAC address generally remains fixed and follows the network device, but the IP address changes as the network device moves from one network to another.

It’s a slight oversimplification, but one can think of IP addressing as supporting the software implementation and MAC addresses as supporting the hardware implementation of the network stack. Whereas MAC addressing works at the data link layer, IP addressing functions at the network layer (layer 3). What is the Difference between MAC and IP address? What is the Difference between MAC and IP address?.

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