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Catalyst2950 Desktop Switch Software Configuration Guide
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Chapter7 Administering the Swi tc h Managing the ARP Table
Managing the ARP Table
To communicate with a device (over Eth ernet, for e xam ple), the softw are f irst m ust dete rmine the 48-bi t
MAC or the local data link address of that device. The process of determining the local data link address
from an IP address is called address resolution.
The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) associates a host IP address with the corresponding media or
MAC addresses and the VLAN ID. Taking an IP address as input, ARP determines the associated MAC
address. Once a MAC address is determined, the IP-MAC address asso ciatio n is sto red in an ARP c ache
for rapid retrieval. Then the IP datagram is encapsulated in a link- layer fr ame and sen t ov er the ne twork.
Encapsulation of IP datagrams and ARP requests and replies on IEEE 802 networks other than Ethe rnet
is specified by the Subnetwork Access Protocol (SNAP). By default, standard Ethernet-style ARP
encapsulation (represented by the arpa keyword) is enabled on the IP interface.
ARP entries added manually to the table do not age and must be manually removed.
For CLI procedures, refer to the Cisco IOS Release 12.1 documentation on Cisco.com.