Special Edition Using TCP/IP, Second Edition

Address Resolution

The Internet layer and the Network Interface layer follow different ways of addressing a computer and therefore, a method by which you can resolve a software address and get the corresponding hardware address or vice versa is required. This process is called address resolution. If on a network, a computer, Computer A, needs to communicate with another com-puter, Computer B, on the same network, Computer A uses the IP address of Computer B to send data. However, as the Network Interface layer requires the hardware address of Computer B to transmit data over the physical medium, there needs to be a method by which the corresponding hardware address can be found from the IP address. This is done by a Link layer protocol called ...