On Sun, 23 Jun 2002, Doug McGarrett wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jun 2002, Bob B wrote:
I have another ? on cable modems or at least the network i was wondering if someone could tell me if cable companys on there network do alot of arping it seems when i do tcpdump om my eth interface i see them arping like the whole network they have is this normal if not is there some way to not have this happening it it is normal then i guess then that be it
This is normal behavior for some networks, like cox.net that I use. It is part of the cable provider's headend equipment behavior acting like an ethernet bridge. There's nothing I'm aware of you can do about it, but it doesn't hurt anyway.
I suppose I should have asked the original sender, but what does "arping" mean? Thanx. PS You might send your answer to the list; I doubt that a lot of the others know either.
ARP=Address Resolution Protocol. ARPing is when a host sends an ethernet message to ask for the ethernet address of another host with a known IP address on the same ethernet segment. Ethernet bridges make many ethernet segments appear to be one by repeating ethernet broadcast messages (and ARPs are usually broadcast) on all segments being bridged together. Many cable modem systems act like large ethernets. Jim