- Document last change to ARP behavior.

- Document several undocumented sysctl variables.
- Fix spelling of few diagnostics.
This commit is contained in:
glebius 2005-11-10 11:35:53 +00:00
parent 20a1214886
commit d654293ebd

View File

@ -28,7 +28,7 @@
.\" @(#)arp4.4 6.5 (Berkeley) 4/18/94
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd June 16, 2004
.Dd November 10, 2005
.Dt ARP 4
.Os
.Sh NAME
@ -55,9 +55,10 @@ ARP will queue at most one packet while waiting for a response to a
mapping request;
only the most recently ``transmitted'' packet is kept.
If the target host does not respond after several requests,
the host is considered to be down for a short period (normally 20 seconds),
allowing an error to be returned to transmission attempts during this
interval.
the host is considered to be down allowing an error to be returned to
transmission attempts.
Further demand for this mapping causes ARP request retransmissions, that
are ratelimited to one packet per second.
The error is
.Er EHOSTDOWN
for a non-responding destination host, and
@ -75,11 +76,6 @@ causing routes to individual hosts on that network to be created on
demand.
These routes time out periodically (normally 20 minutes after validated;
entries are not validated when not in use).
An entry for a host which is not responding is a
.Dq reject
route (one with the
.Li RTF_REJECT
flag set).
.Pp
ARP entries may be added, deleted or changed with the
.Xr arp 8
@ -115,6 +111,27 @@ It may be enabled by setting the
MIB variable
.Va net.link.ether.inet.proxyall
to 1.
.Sh MIB Variables
The ARP protocol implements a number of configrable variables in
.Va net.link.ether.inet
branch
of the
.Xr sysctl 3
MIB.
.Bl -tag
.It Dv prune_intvl
How frequently the ARP cache is cleaned from expired entries.
.It Dv max_age
How long an ARP entry is hold in cache until it needs to be refreshed.
.It Dv maxtries
Number of retransmits before host is considered down and error is returned.
.It Dv useloopback
If an ARP entry is added for local address, force the traffic to go through
the loopback interface. If set to 0 the traffic will be enforced to go
through the hardware.
.It Dv proxyall
Enables ARP proxying for all hosts on net.
.El
.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
.Em "arp: %x:%x:%x:%x:%x:%x is using my IP address %d.%d.%d.%d!" :
ARP has discovered another host on the local network which responds to
@ -122,12 +139,12 @@ mapping requests for its own Internet address with a different Ethernet
address, generally indicating that two hosts are attempting to use the
same Internet address.
.Pp
.Em "arp: ether address is broadcast for IP address %d.%d.%d.%d!" :
.Em "arp: link address is broadcast for IP address %d.%d.%d.%d!" :
ARP requested information for a host, and received an answer indicating
that the host's ethernet address is the ethernet broadcast address.
This indicates a misconfigured or broken device.
.Pp
.Em "arp: %d.%d.%d.%d moved from %x:%x:%x:%x:%x:%x to %x:%x:%x:%x:%x:%x" :
.Em "arp: %d.%d.%d.%d moved from %x:%x:%x:%x:%x:%x to %x:%x:%x:%x:%x:%x on %s" :
ARP had a cached value for the ethernet address of the referenced host,
but received a reply indicating that the host is at a new address.
This can happen normally when host hardware addresses change,