Reverse Address Resolution Protocol

protocol that enables translation of a physical Internet address to an IP address (used mainly by computers that lack hard disks in order to determine their individual IP addresses), RARP

Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) is a network layer protocol used to obtain an IP address for a given hardware address (such as an Ethernet address). It has been rendered obsolete by BOOTP and the more modern DHCP, which both support a much greater feature set than RARP.The primary limitations of RARP are that each MAC must be manually configured on a central server, and that the protocol only conveys an IP address. This leaves configuration of subnetting, gateways, and other information to other protocols or the user.Another limitation of RARP compared to BOOTP or DHCP is that it is a non-IP protocol. This means that like ARP it can't be handled by the TCP/IP stack on the client, but is instead implemented separately.
See more at Wikipedia.org...

<networking, protocol> (RARP) A protocol defined in RFC 903 which provides the reverse function of ARP. RARP maps a hardware address (MAC address) to an Internet address. It is used primarily by diskless nodes, when they first initialise, to find their Internet address.
See also BOOTP.
(1994-12-08)