During troubleshooting, an engineer finds excessive ARP requests in the network. Which setting could mitigate this issue?

Question

Options

• AAdjusting MAC aging timers
• BEnabling DHCP Snooping
• CIncreasing ARP cache size
• DConfiguring proxy ARP

• A
  2% (1)
• B
  90% (43)
• C
  6% (3)
• D
  2% (1)

Explanation

DHCP Snooping mitigates excessive ARP requests by building a trusted IP-to-MAC binding table from legitimate DHCP transactions, which enables Dynamic ARP Inspection (DAI) to validate and rate-limit ARP packets - stopping the spoofing attacks and IP conflicts that typically cause ARP floods. Option A (MAC aging timers) affects how long switch MAC tables retain entries, which influences unicast flooding but has no direct impact on ARP broadcast volume. Option C (increasing ARP cache size) only reduces how often a single device re-ARPs for known hosts - it's a band-aid that ignores the root cause of the flood. Option D (proxy ARP) is the opposite of helpful here: it causes a router to answer ARP requests on behalf of remote hosts, generating more ARP responses and worsening the problem.

Memory tip: Think of DHCP Snooping as the network's "ID checker" - it knows who legitimately got which IP address, so it can spot and stop the imposters causing ARP chaos. If you see "excessive ARP" on an exam, think attack/spoofing → DHCP Snooping + DAI.

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