RARP has been rendered obsolete by the Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) and the modern Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), which both support a much greater feature set than RARP.
RARP requires one or more server hosts to maintain a database of mappings of link layer addresses to their respective protocol addresses.
MAC addresses need to be individually configured on the servers by an administrator.
Reverse ARP differs from the Inverse Address Resolution Protocol (InARP), which is designed to obtain the IP address associated with a local Frame Relay data link connection identifier.
Although the original uses for RARP have been superseded by different protocols, some modern-day protocols use RARP to handle MAC migration, particularly in virtual machines, using a technique originating in QEMU.