Arping

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Arping is a software tool used to discover and examine computers on a network . Arping examines the network connected to the computer by sending link layer frames using the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) request procedure. These are sent to a computer that is identified by the MAC address of its network interface. The program can also resolve user-specified IP addresses using ARP.

The way arping works is analogous to the ping system tool for examining the network using the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) on the Internet layer of the Internet Protocol Suite .

There are two popular implementations of arping. One is part of the Linux iputils suite and cannot resolve MAC addresses into IP addresses. The other arping implementation, written by Thomas Habets, can ping computers both via the MAC address and via the IP address and offers other functions. Having both arping implementations set up on the same system can lead to conflicts. Some Linux distributions therefore remove iputils arping along with dependent packages such as NetworkManager when Habets' arping is installed. Others (e.g. Debian- based distributions like Ubuntu) have split iputils-arping into separate packages to avoid this problem.

In networks that use repeaters with proxy ARP , the ARP response can come from these proxy computers instead of directly from the target computer being examined.

example

arping output from a sample session from iputils:

ARPING 192.168.39.120 from 192.168.39.1 eth0
Unicast reply from 192.168.39.120 [00:01:80:38:F7:4C]  0.810ms
Unicast reply from 192.168.39.120 [00:01:80:38:F7:4C]  0.607ms
Unicast reply from 192.168.39.120 [00:01:80:38:F7:4C]  0.602ms
Unicast reply from 192.168.39.120 [00:01:80:38:F7:4C]  0.606ms
Sent 4 probes (1 broadcast(s))
Received 4 response(s)

Output of a sample session from Thomas Habets' 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)

See also

  • ArpON
  • arpwatch

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ arping Linux manual page
  2. ↑ Arping on GitHub
  3. ↑ Arping on GitHub

Web links