CONTENTS

DESCRIPTION

A user process can receive ARP packets by using packet(7) sockets. There is also a mechanism for managing the ARP cache in user-space by using netlink(7) sockets. The ARP table can also be controlled via ioctl (2) on any PF_INET socket.

The ARP module maintains a cache of mappings between hardware addresses and protocol addresses. The cache has a limited size so old and less frequently used entries are garbage-collected. Entries which are marked as permanent are never deleted by the garbage-collector. The cache can be directly manipulated by the use of ioctls and its behaviour can be tuned by the sysctls defined below.

When there is no positive feedback for an existing mapping after some time (see the sysctls below) a neighbour cache entry is considered stale. Positive feedback can be gotten from a higher layer; for example from a successful TCP ACK. Other protocols can signal forward progress using the MSG_CONFIRM flag to sendmsg(2). When there is no forward progress ARP tries to reprobe. It first tries to ask a local arp daemon app_solicit times for an updated MAC address. If that fails and an old MAC address is known an unicast probe is send ucast_solicit times. If that fails too it will broadcast a new ARP request to the network. Requests are only send when there is data queued for sending.

Linux will automatically add a non-permanent proxy arp entry when it receives a request for an address it forwards to and proxy arp is enabled on the receiving interface. When there is a reject route for the target no proxy arp entry is added.

struct arpreq
{
struct sockaddr arp_pa; /* protocol address */
struct sockaddr arp_ha; /* hardware address */
int arp_flags; /* flags */
struct sockaddr arp_netmask; /* netmask of protocol address */
char arp_dev[16];
};

SIOCSARP", "SIOCDARP" and "SIOCGARP respectively set, delete and get an ARP mapping. Setting & deleting ARP maps are privileged operations and may only be performed by a process with the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability or an effective UID of 0.

arp_pa must be an AF_INET socket and arp_ha must have the same type as the device which is specified in arp_dev. arp_dev is a zero-terminated string which names a device.

If the ATF_NETMASK flag is set, then arp_netmask should be valid. Linux 2.2 does not support proxy network ARP entries, so this should be set to 0xffffffff, or 0 to remove an existing proxy arp entry. ATF_USETRAILERS is obsolete and should not be used.

BUGS

There is no way to signal positive feedback from user space. This means connection oriented protocols implemented in user space will generate excessive ARP traffic, because ndisc will regularly reprobe the MAC address. The same problem applies for some kernel protocols (e.g. NFS over UDP).

This man page mashes IPv4 specific and shared between IPv4 and IPv6 functionality together.

Support for proxy arp entries for networks (netmask not equal 0xffffffff) was dropped in Linux 2.2. It is replaced by automatic proxy arp setup by the kernel for all reachable hosts on other interfaces (when forwarding and proxy arp is enabled for the interface).

The neigh/* sysctls did not exist before Linux 2.2.