Why is an ARP cache not efficient when it is applied to a LAN?

The implementation of Address resolution protocol in a local area network uses a table called ARP cache to maintain a correlation between each MAC address and its corresponding IP address. Can you explain why every use of a fixed size of ARP cache is not efficient whenever it is applied to a LAN having a very large number of host clients machines and many transactions?

The ARP cache maintains a table of IP address to MAC address translations. The ARP cache should never get unmanageably large because ARP is only used to resolve MAC addresses on a local segment. Local segments on well-designed networks are created with a limited number of network hosts to prevent overabundant ARP and other broadcast traffic.

All remote communications are done through the gateway and only the gateway MAC is used to send requests to remote clients.

This was first published in June 2002

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