Re: Knowledge of destination MAC address

"glen herrmannsfeldt" <gah@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

ARP is not IP-specific, by the way. It can accept any Layer 3 addresses, in principle.

In principle, but do you know any other than IP that use it?

No, but that's why I said "in principle." For example, even IPv6 *could* use ARP. But IPv6 has its own unique mechanism.

Another point is that ARP gets a lot of bad press for using broadcasts for its queries. But once virtually everything was migrated to IPv4, I don't think it made a whole lot of difference anymore. There were not many hosts out there that got interrupted unnecessarily. ND, with its multicast queries, will eventually interrupt all hosts too, if IPv6 becomes the norm.

Apple's ethertalk uses AARP. I don't know where an online
reference is. See "Inside AppleTalk, second edition".

DECNet assigns the MAC address based on the DECNet area and node.

DECnet had some sort of address resolution protocol. I forget the name. You had to discover all the nodes on your network, but it was a one time deal. Remember? It took a few minutes to populate the table.

http://linux-decnet.sourceforge.net/faq-4.html#ss4.2

-- glen

Bert

.