When a monitor receives an Address Resolution packet, it always
enters the
Because the protocol and opcode are not combined into one field,
the monitor does not need to know which request opcode is
associated with which reply opcode for the same higher level
protocol. The length fields should also give enough information
to enable it to "parse" a protocol addresses, although it has no
knowledge of what the protocol addresses mean.
A working implementation of the Address Resolution protocol can
also be used to debug a non-working implementation. Presumably a
hardware driver will successfully broadcast a packet with Ethernet
type field of ether_type$ADDRESS_RESOLUTION. The format of the
packet may not be totally correct, because initial
implementations may have bugs, and table management may be
slightly tricky. Because requests are broadcast a monitor will
receive the packet and can display it for debugging if desired.
Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
Network monitoring and debugging