ARP frame vs MAC frame

I am looking to see if anyone out there can give me some information on:

- what is ARP frame

- what is MAC frame

- or both are the same when a node sends a packet (which packet, ARP, MAC , ?) to solicit a MAC address, in other words while it's broadcasting.

thanks, PS.

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Cheers,
Siva Palaninathan.
Reply to
Siva Palaninathan
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MAC (Media Access Control) is the address used by the low-level networking, e.g. Ethernet or Arcnet handling. It points out a station in the local network.

ARP is a protocol in the Internet Protocol (IP) stack for translation of IP addresses (4 dotted bytes, e.g. 192.168.42.13) to the MAC addresses (e.g. Ethernet 00:0d:20:52:68:34).

A MAC frame is, AFAIK, the IP packet sent on the link level with the MAC headers and trailers.

An ARP frame is a link level frame carrying the ARP protocol data.

The MAC address is resolved by an ARP protocol query frame which is a broadcast MAC frame. The addressed station sends back (non-broadcast) an ARP response frame.

HTH

Tauno Voipio tauno voipio @ iki fi

Reply to
Tauno Voipio

IMO the best thing is installing a packet sniffer and looking at some packets. Of course, a good book helps ;-)

I quite like ethereal:

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Jan-Hinnerk

Reply to
Jan-Hinnerk Reichert

Absolutely! Nothing better than seeing it in action - especially with a decode.

Reply to
Richard

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