On Tue, 19 Aug 2003 19:05:13 +0100 Richard Underwood <richard@aspectgroup.co.uk> wrote:
The ARP request represents all FUTURE packets being sent out that interface, not just the one single packet that happened to kick of this ARP request.
That's RIGHT! And by your own argument the source address in the ARP request IS IRRELEVANT and is to be ignored!
The source address in the ARP request is not irrelevant, because a broadcast arp request causes all recipients of that broadcast request to update their arp cache entry (if they have a cache entry for that IP) for the IP specified in the source with the MAC specified in the request.
So, in an environment where a single address is aliased in multiple places, such as tunnel endpoints and loopback aliases, and in multi-homed same-segment configs, it is unpredictable asto which IP will be bound to which MAC for every machine (or arp cache) on the network.
--Harley
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