sale@wanda.ingr.com (Ed Sale) (09/26/90)
When our workstations boot, in an effort to ensure that the workstation is not configured with the same internet address as another station on the net, we send an ARP request asking for a translation for the internet address that we are about to use. RFC826 states that: 298: "The sender hardware address and sender protocol address are 299: absolutely necessary." and also: 227: "Notice that the <protocol type, sender protocol address, sender 228: hardware address> triplet is merged into the table before the 229: opcode is looked at." Since our intention is to avoid sending out conflicting address translation information on the net, what we have been doing is to set the sender protocol address to all-zero, intending that to mean, "this host on this net" (line 1736, RFC1122). In this way, an ARP request which is broadcast to the net does not update everyone's table with a translation which may be erroneous, and our stations find out about any address conflict before using the address. Does this violate the ARP protocol, or is this a valid technique? Thanks in advance. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Ed Sale Intergraph Corp. Huntsville, AL 35894-0001 (205)730-2000 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++