Re: [RFC] ARP notify option

Stephen Hemminger
2007-03-06T22:54:10Z

On Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:18:07 -0600
"Chris Friesen" <cfriesen@nortel.com> wrote:

> Stephen Hemminger wrote:
>
> > +arp_notify - BOOLEAN
> > + Define mode for notification of address and device changes.
> > + 0 - (default): do nothing
> > + 1 - Generate gratuitous arp replies when device is brought up
> > + or hardware address changes.
>
> Did you consider using gratuitous arp requests instead? I remember
> reading about some hardware that updated its arp cache on gratuitous
> requests but not gratuitous replies.
>
> Chris

I copied the ARP generation from other places that were doing
gratuitous ARP already: Xen and irlan.
Our local switch used REPLY's to do the same thing.

One could imagine making it a ternary value and having 2 generate
REQUEST's.

--
Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>