[84] in linux-net channel archive
Re: plip
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Johannes Stille)
Sun Feb 12 09:43:20 1995
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 95 19:44 MET
From: johannes@titan.westfalen.de (Johannes Stille)
To: linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu
Cc: johannes@titan.westfalen.de
NIIBE Yukata wrote:
[...]
>
>However, using default means that it send arp packets. Once, I thought
>that this arp is useless because PLIP is point-to-point, but I know
>that there is such a DOS application which cares about the HW address.
>Let me think a while...
Just for this purpose ifconfig knows the "-arp" flag; one can configure
whether the interface by default should use arp.
As far as I can see, setting IFF_NOARP prevents sending ARP packets,
but does not prevent waiting for the answer.
Or is security the only purpose of this flag (one has to enter a fixed
arp table manually)?
In other words, what should happen if we want to send to an interface
that has arp disabled, but the destination is not in our arp cache?
Should we send the packet without a hardware address or should we drop
it?
I propose to make the routine used for filling the header into PLIP
packets depend on whether the IFF_NOARP flag is set for the interface.
And for compatibility, by default ARP should be used.
Johannes
