arping is a software utility for discovering hosts on a computer network by sending link layer frames using Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) requests addressed to a host identified by its MAC address.
[1] The utility may use ARP to resolve an IP address provided by the user.
The utility is similar to ping which operates at a higher network layer – probing the network at the Internet Layer via the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP).
The other, written by Thomas Habets,[3] can ping hosts by MAC address as well as by IP address, and adds more features.
In networks employing repeaters that implement proxy ARP, the ARP response may originate from such proxy hosts and not directly from the probed target.