1-2 
Table 1-1 describes the fields of an ARP packet. 
Table 1-1 Description on the fields of an ARP packet 
Field  Description 
Hardware Type 
Type of the hardware interface. Refer to 
Table 1-2 for 
the information about the field values. 
Protocol type 
Type of protocol address to be mapped. 0x0800 
indicates an IP address. 
Length of hardware address  Hardware address length (in bytes) 
Length of protocol address  Protocol address length (in bytes) 
Operator 
Indicates the type of a data packets, which can be: 
z  1: ARP request packets 
z  2: ARP reply packets 
z  3: RARP request packets 
z  4: RARP reply packets 
Hardware address of the sender  Hardware address of the sender 
IP address of the sender  IP address of the sender 
Hardware address of the receiver 
z  For an ARP request packet, this field is null. 
z  For an ARP reply packet, this field carries the 
hardware address of the receiver. 
IP address of the receiver  IP address of the receiver 
 
Table 1-2 Description on the values of the hardware type field 
Value  Description 
1 Ethernet 
2 Experimental Ethernet 
3 X.25 
4  Proteon ProNET (Token Ring) 
5 Chaos 
6 IEEE802.X 
7 ARC network 
 
ARP Table 
In an Ethernet, the MAC addresses of two hosts must be available for the two hosts to communicate 
with each other. Each host in an Ethernet maintains an ARP table, where the latest used IP 
address-to-MAC address mapping entries are stored. Switch 4210 Family provide the display arp 
command to display the information about ARP mapping entries. 
ARP entries in a Switch 4210 can either be static entries or dynamic entries, as described in 
Table 1-3.