Will Ball wrote:
> I keep getting a message on my NetBSD machine.  My machine is called
> pimpbot and is running the i386 version of NetBSD 1.2.  Here is the example
> of the message that I keep getting
> 
> 	Oct 30 21:29:53 pimpbot /netbsd: arp info overwritten for 80c10414 by
> 00:00:0c:06:c5:f9
> 
> The ethernet address sometimes is different, but I figured that didn't
> really matter.  My question is what does this message exactly mean?  I know
> it has something to do with the network, and probally someone is
> overwriting my ip address, but I do not know what exactly this message
> means.  Thanks for any help.

It means that the box with IP 128.193.4.20 (80c10414) has just sent a
gratuitous arp reply [*] with a MAC address of 00:00:0c:06:c5:f9.  The
(old) entry in the arp cache on your machine for 128.193.4.20 had a
different MAC address.  Presumably you've got 2 cisco routers (MAC
00:00:0c = cisco) configured for standby or someone is swapping them
around or something is broken somewhere.

J

[*] A gratuitous arp reply is a reply for which no-one sent a request.  It
is a broadcast packet and used to signal that a machine has just come up
with this IP/MAC address.  Useful for routers to do this so everyone can
update their arp cache.

PS.  ARP is used for the mapping of IP to link layer addresses.
     See RFC 826 for the ethernet ARP specification.

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S.E.P.