I had a server, with one nic answering to 172.25.9.3 for local users and x.y.x.t , public address for hosts with a public address. (this server hosts the DNS for the subnet) It worked fine, until i decided to improve bandwidth, adding a second NIC to serve just the public address, and leaving the first one for the private, of course since the hosts are mixed on the physical network the two nics are connected to two posrts of the same switch. After a few days someone told me that some HP and brother printers (having a public address) stopped working (while canons continude to work). The log from the printer show an outrageous ly hig number of incoming packets. Sniffing on the network i fount that there were two (and only two) windows XP hosts having a public address that sent an arp who_has 172.25.9.3. This was odd either because only that two hosts did, and because since these are on x.y.x.0 subnet these shound have asked for x.y.z.t and nopt for the private address they knew nothing about it ! but the problem was that my host replied with two replies, giving as the address for 172.25.9.3 both NIC. The requiring host were confused and sent again the request, my hsot replied again with two addresses, they were unhappy and sent agin the request, about 3000 times per second ... Net result was: 1. the request being broadcast were sent to every host in the subnet, be3ing unnoticed by someone, but hogging the printers; 2. even 172.25.9.3 was unappy, and at sometimes was actually slower than when it had only one nic.
What could be the solution ? ( ifconfig give a correct attribution NIC<->IP address, only that two machines, out of about 200 [70% XP, 10% W2k, 20% Linux] have this behaviour ) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
