[U-Boot-Users] U-Boot not responding back to ARP requests?

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Robin,

in message <6.1.1.1.0.20040926124409.01e178d0 at wheresmymailserver.com> you wrote:
> 
> I was doing some debugging of some networking issues I am seeing, and saw
> something that I thought was strange. I am seeing the following:

It's normal.

> And now U-boot stops, and goes back to the command prompt. (like it should)

At  this   point,   please   remember   that   U-Boot   is   strictly
single-tasking, and that it usually uses polled device drivers only.

> Now the Server starts asking:
> 
> Server Broadcasts -> who has 192.168.0.3? Tell 192.168.0.2
> Server Broadcasts -> who has 192.168.0.3? Tell 192.168.0.2
> Server Broadcasts -> who has 192.168.0.3? Tell 192.168.0.2
> It does that three times (once a second) every time that it sees a packet.

Why does your server do that? It just TALKED with 192.168.0.2, so  it
should  really  be able to remember which MAC address it used to send
the ICMP replies to.

> My question is - shouldn't U-Boot respond? I don't see it in the code (I 
> see the rarp handler, but not a arp handler).

Why should U-Boot respond? It has completed it's  network  task,  and
shut down the network driver. It does not even attemot to receive any
packets from the network any more.

> My problem is that I have many U-boot boards on the same network, and the 
> network is being flooded with ARP traffic, as the routers try to figure out 
> the U-Boot MAC<->IP associations.

For U-Boot this is a S.E.P. (Somebody Else's  Problem).  U-Boot  does
not care about this (and there is no reason why it should).

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-4596-87  Fax: (+49)-8142-4596-88  Email: wd at denx.de
Where there's no emotion, there's no motive for violence.
	-- Spock, "Dagger of the Mind", stardate 2715.1