Why would an arp frame have a destination mac address of 00:00:00:00:00:00?
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ARP protocol is used to find out MAC address of your destination when you know the destination IP address on an Ethernet network.
So, what would you put in the destination MAC field of ARP when you dont know the destination MAC address? 00:00:00:00:00:00!
The ARP packet is encapsulated into an Ethernet frame with destination MAC address set to ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff (broadcast) so it reaches all the machines on the network. The machine bearing IP address mentioned in the ARP request packet responds by sending an ARP response packet with its MAC address.
Now, the source machine gets back the ARP response with the target MAC address and puts it into an ARP table in memory so that it doesnt need to use ARP each time till the ARP table entry expires.
Using the target MAC address, the source machine now can create an Ethernet frame with the target MAC address as destination and send the frame over the network.
So, what would you put in the destination MAC field of ARP when you dont know the destination MAC address? 00:00:00:00:00:00!
The ARP packet is encapsulated into an Ethernet frame with destination MAC address set to ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff (broadcast) so it reaches all the machines on the network. The machine bearing IP address mentioned in the ARP request packet responds by sending an ARP response packet with its MAC address.
Now, the source machine gets back the ARP response with the target MAC address and puts it into an ARP table in memory so that it doesnt need to use ARP each time till the ARP table entry expires.
Using the target MAC address, the source machine now can create an Ethernet frame with the target MAC address as destination and send the frame over the network.
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