RARP
At the beginning of the Internet era, a protocol called Reverse Address Resolution Protocol
(RARP) was designed to provide the IP address for a booted computer. RARP
was actually a version of ARP that we discussed in Chapter 8. ARP maps an IP address
to a physical address: RARP maps a physical address to an IP address. However, RARP
is deprecated today for two reasons. First, RARP used the broadcast service of the data
link layer, which means that a RARP server must be present in each network. Second,
RARP can provide only the IP address of the computer, but a computer today needs all
four pieces of information mentioned above.