Address mapping in a LAN

[ashutoshshrivastav15]

Suppose I have a four PC's connected with a common switch. Now I want to know The first steps that happen in that LAN .

How each PC's get each others MAC and IP addresses . and Which address of other device they get first either MAC or IP address. Tell me in brief and I know How ARP and RARP works but for that at least it should have one address of two addresses.

[Philip D'Ath]

Well, they start off knowing nothing.  In the IPv4 world, when host 'A' wants to talk to host 'B' it sends a broadcast arp (which every host receives) saying "who has IP address a.b.c.d, tell me".  The host with the that IP address responds, and the original host now has the MAC address of host 'B'.

Apart from that, a host can also lean the MAC address of another host if a packet is unicast to it.