OKI 6020E Manual De Usuario

IV - 61

The purpose of RARP is to look up a 32-bit IP address
given a 48-bit network hardware address. The RARP
server (which is usually a UNIX workstation running a
rarpd daemon) performs this function using two
configuration files and one or more daemons. The
configuration files are “/etc/hosts” and “/etc/ethers” and
the daemon is called rarpd. A name can be assigned to
any device on a network and is arbitrary. For the
following examples the name used for the OkiLAN
6020e is OKIPRINTER. Remember that this name is
arbitrary; a customer can assign any name.

/etc/hosts: The “/etc/hosts” file is where each entry

maps a host name to an IP address. An
example entry is shown below.

192.168.42.55 OKIPRINTER

/etc/ethers: The “/etc/ethers” file is where each entry

maps a host name to a network hardware
address. An example entry is shown below.

00:02:16:17:50:A4 OKIPRINTER

The following sequence of events occurs during the
power up of the OkiLAN 6020e using RARP:

1. The OkiLAN 6020e powers up but does not know its

IP address. However, it does know its network
hardware address.

2. It sends out a RARP request message with its

network hardware address. For this example, the
OkiLAN 6020e address is 00:02:16:17:50:A4.

3. The rarpd daemon running on a RARP server (in this

example the RARP server is a UNIX workstation)
sees the RARP request along with the network
hardware address in the “/etc/ethers” file. The rarpd
daemon finds the host name, OKIPRINTER, listed
as the name associated with the network hardware
address.