Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-crg.llnl.gov!casey
From: casey@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: Latest news on our ether errors
Message-ID: <4097@lll-winken.llnl.gov>
Date: 23 Feb 88 05:06:10 GMT
References: <8403@g.ms.uky.edu>
Sender: usenet@lll-winken.llnl.gov
Reply-To: casey@lll-crg.llnl.gov.UUCP (Casey Leedom)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lines: 15

In article <8403@g.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron) writes:
>Well, a little bit of sleuthing uncovered the fact that we were
>having a broadcast storm, and didn't even know it. ... a constant
>stream of 3b2s/3b1s and a sequent all ARPing for 128.163.255.255.

  I'm curious, I've noticed this behavior with 4.2BSD based networking
implementations also.  It's my understanding that the gratuitous ARP
responses for packets send to the local-network/all-ones-host-part
address is an attempt to negotiate trailer encapsulation on a global basis
instead of the current 4.3BSD method which does the trailer encapsulation
negotiation when an ARP request is received.  Am I talking out my hat?
For my own and others' edification would someone explain exactly why
4.2BSD based networking responds with gratuitous ARPs for packets
addressed to xxx.xxx.255.255, etc.?  Thanks in advance.

Casey