> >From what I have seen in experiments, swtiches autolearn the various > (Ethernet) interfaces connected to its various ports using the ARP > requests and replies flowing through them. And they forget it after a > while of 'no use'. That is wrong. ARP has nothing to do with it. Switches learn the MAC addresses by looking at the source MAC address coming in on the port, and nothing else. > My question is: Will they forget an entry even if traffic is > continuously flowing thru that port? Maybe. The next packet will reestablish the mapping. The switch won't guarantee you that it keeps the mapping all the time. It may just have been rebooted between two frames. > i.e. Does there have to be regular ARPs No. best regards Patrick - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-net" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
