Re: Ping a mac address

[James Eaton-Lee <james.mailing () gmail com>]

On Sun, 2005-12-04 at 11:11 +0100, rob.dijkshoorn () planet nl wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Seems to me you are mixing up osi-layer functionality. 
>
> A MAC-address is a layer 2 (physical) address. 

layer two is the data link layer, layer one is the physical layer. :-P

 - James.

> This address only has
> significance on the local broadcast domain. In ip-terms, your local subnet. 
> Ping is a layer 4 protocol, used to check end-to-end connectivity
> between ip-adresses. You can't use ping to ping a mac-address, since the
> protocol underlying ping (ICMP) won't understand it.
>
> What you want to do is translate between ip- and mac-addresses. For
> this, the address resolution protocol (ARP) is used, alongside its
> brother, the reverse address resolution protocol (RARP). If you want to
> figure out what ip-address belongs to a specific mac, you need RARP. The
> fastest way to check this is to check the arp cache on the switch. 
>
> As for tools... i guess some good suggestions have been made on the list
> already.
>
> regards,
> Rob 

-- 
James (njan) Eaton-Lee | 10807960
Semper Monemus Sed Non Audiunt, Ergo Lartus - (Jean-Croix)

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