Wireshark · Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] Why are there a lot of ARP traffic inanetwork?

[Ian Schorr <ian.schorr@xxxxxxxxx>]

>I am looking at a 200-second trace with 10,511 packets, in this case
>there are 7,720 ARP packets (73.45%). Can I take it easy? What can I do
>to reduce those ARP packets in the network's traffic?

Is that 73% of all traffic, or 73% of broadcast/multicast traffic? 7720
ARPs in 200 seconds is less than 20kb/s, which in traffic terms seems
pretty small.

Yeah, forget about the *percentage* of traffic.  For one thing, you're talking about extremely low data rates here (whatever host(s) you're monitoring in that trace are virtually idle).  

Instead, look at how much traffic you're talking about in real terms.  7720 ARPs in 200 seconds is 38.6 frames/sec, and probably well lower than 20KByte/sec.  It seems a little high, for a 200-node network, I suppose, but nowhere close to what I'd consider a "problem" on a typical LAN.  Unless you have a really peculiar setup that'd be strangely affected by this kind of broadcast rate (some really incredibly slow hosts on the LAN that are extremely sensitive to unnecessary interrupts, or something), I'd say you can take it easy.

Why are you worried about it in the first place?  Just something you noticed when you were playing with Wireshark?