The following sections describe configurations of static ARP and dynamic ARP.
On a LAN, a host or a network device must know the logical address (IP address) of another host or network device to send data to it. Only the logical address, however, is not enough. Since IP packets are encapsulated in frames for transmission across a physical network, the physical address of the destination device must also be known. Therefore, the mapping from a logical address to a physical address is required. The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is introduced to map IP addresses to physical addresses (Ethernet MAC addresses).