arping is a computer software tool for discovering and probing hosts on a

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections ar ...

. Arping probes hosts on the examined network link by sending link layer frames using the

Address Resolution Protocol The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a communication protocol used for discovering the link layer address, such as a MAC address, associated with a given internet layer address, typically an IPv4 address. This mapping is a critical functio ...

(ARP) request method addressed to a host identified by its

MAC address A media access control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for use as a network address in communications within a network segment. This use is common in most IEEE 802 networking tec ...

of the network interface. The utility program may use ARP to resolve an

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

provided by the user. The function of arping is analogous to the utility ''ping'' that probes the network with the

Internet Control Message Protocol The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a supporting protocol in the Internet protocol suite. It is used by network devices, including routers, to send error messages and operational information indicating success or failure when commu ...

(ICMP) at the

Internet Layer The internet layer is a group of internetworking methods, protocols, and specifications in the Internet protocol suite that are used to transport network packets from the originating host across network boundaries; if necessary, to the destinat ...

of the

Internet Protocol Suite The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the sui ...

. Two popular arping implementations exist. One is part of Linux iputils suite, and cannot resolve MAC addresses to IP addresses. The other arping implementation, written by Thomas Habets, can ping hosts by MAC address as well as by IP address, and adds more features. Having both arping implementations on a system may introduce conflicts. Some Linux distros handle this by removing iputils arping along with dependent packages like

NetworkManager NetworkManager is a daemon that sits on top of libudev and other Linux kernel interfaces (and a couple of other daemons) and provides a high-level interface for the configuration of the network interfaces. Rationale NetworkManager is a software ...

if Habets's arping is installed. Others (e.g.

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

-based distros like Ubuntu) have iputils-arping split into a separate package to avoid this problem. In networks employing repeaters that implement

proxy ARP Proxy ARP is a technique by which a proxy server on a given network answers the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) queries for an IP address that is not on that network. The proxy is aware of the location of the traffic's destination and offers its ...

, the ARP response may originate from such proxy hosts and not directly from the probed target.

Example

Example session output of arping from iputils:

ARPING 192.168.39.120 from 192.168.39.1 eth0
Unicast reply from 192.168.39.120  0:01:80:38:F7:4C 0.810ms
Unicast reply from 192.168.39.120  0:01:80:38:F7:4C 0.607ms
Unicast reply from 192.168.39.120  0:01:80:38:F7:4C 0.602ms
Unicast reply from 192.168.39.120  0:01:80:38:F7:4C 0.606ms
Sent 4 probes (1 broadcast(s))
Received 4 response(s)

Example session output from Thomas Habets's arping:

ARPING 192.168.16.96
60 bytes from 00:04:5a:4b:b6:ec (192.168.16.96): index=0 time=292.000 usec
60 bytes from 00:04:5a:4b:b6:ec (192.168.16.96): index=1 time=310.000 usec
60 bytes from 00:04:5a:4b:b6:ec (192.168.16.96): index=2 time=256.000 usec
^C
--- 192.168.16.96 statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received,   0% unanswered (0 extra)

References

External links

arping by Thomas Habetsiputils suite (including arping)arping source on github
Internet Protocol based network software Free network management software {{network-software-stub

Example

See also

References

External links