What is Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP)? - Definition from Whatis.com

Definition

Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP)

RARP (Reverse Address Resolution Protocol) is a protocol by which a physical machine in a local area network can request to learn its IP address from a gateway server's Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) table or cache. A network administrator creates a table in a local

area network's gateway router that maps the physical machine (or Media Access Control - MAC address) addresses to corresponding Internet Protocol addresses. When a new machine is set up, its RARP client program requests from the RARP server on the router to be sent its IP address. Assuming that an entry has been set up in the router table, the RARP server will return the IP address to the machine which can store it for future use.

RARP is available for Ethernet, Fiber Distributed-Data Interface, and token ring LANs.

Contributor(s): Kevin Beamer and Mariusz Zydyk
This was last updated in December 1999

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