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.
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
IMO the best thing is installing a packet sniffer and looking at some packets. Of course, a good book helps ;-)
I quite like ethereal:
Jan-Hinnerk
Absolutely! Nothing better than seeing it in action - especially with a decode.
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