Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!hedrick From: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: Proxy ARP question Message-ID: Date: 23 May 91 19:48:57 GMT References: <97879@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 11 Proxy ARP seems to have been invented originally simply to handle the problem of systems that did not implement subnets. I believe the first implementations worked only with addresses on other subnets of the same network. It's not used by a number of people for other purposes, and many implementations will respond to requests for addresses on other networks. We use it for finding gateways. That is, we don't like the idea of hardcoding gateway addresses into 100s of config files. So we configure most of our systems to ARP for everything. It's then the gateways' job to make sure that the right gateway responds. We're moving to Cisco's Gateway Discovery Protocol slowly.