2 NICs, SMP, weird kernel ARP messages

[Chuck Swiger]

Thomas Franck wrote:
> On 17 Feb 2006 at 8:07, Chuck Swiger wrote:
[ ... ]
>  Isn't the request broadcast and the reply MAC addressed?

ARPOP_REQUESTs are made to the all-ones broadcast MAC address, and ARPOP_REPLYs
go back addressed to the sender's MAC.

FreeBSD notes when ARP traffic is seen which indicates that a MAC is moving
being on one NIC to another.

> if I'm right on that, the "problem" (it's more cosmetic, really) 
> shouldn't have happened, right..?
> 
> (at the moment the net looks like that:
> 
>  {FreeBSD}
>   |     |
> [sw1] [sw2]
>   |     |
>  [switch3]
>    | |  |
>    | | {me}
>    | 
>  [router]
> 
> the switch3 will be VLAN'ed again and properly connected once 
> the firewall is back..)

Unless you take special measures (ng_fec?), one does not normally connect two
NICs on one machine to the same collision domain.  By default, some other
hardware (like Suns), will even use the same MAC address for every NIC on the
machine....

-- 
-Chuck