Whenever any device intends to communicate with another device, the requesting device sends a broadcast to the whole subnet. Then, the device to which the IP address belongs replies with its MAC address using a unicast packet. Through this approach, devices in local area network communicate with each other. A MAC address (physical address) table stores MAC address with its corresponding port number/IP address.
Use the arp -a command to populate the ARP table entries on your machine. The same command on a majority of platforms.
The following are some details pertaining to the local network we will be using for understating:
|
Device
|
IP address
|
MAC address
|
|
Router (default gateway) |
192.168.1.1 |
D0:5B:A8:07:73:6C |
