3com 3.01.01 Manuale Utente

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Troubleshooting an IP 
Address Configuration
If the Switch 8800 cannot ping a certain host on the LAN, proceed as follows:
Determine which VLAN includes the port connected to the host. Check whether 
the VLAN has been configured with the VLAN interface. Determine whether the IP 
address of the VLAN interface and the host are on the same network segment.
If the configuration is correct, enable ARP debugging on the switch from user 
level, and check whether or not the switch can correctly send and receive ARP 
packets. If it can only send but not receive the ARP packets, there are probably 
errors at the Ethernet physical layer.
Configuring Address 
Resolution Protocol 
(ARP) 
An IP address cannot be directly used for communication between network 
devices, because devices can only identify MAC addresses. An IP address is the 
address of a host at the network layer. To send data packets through the network 
layer to the destination host, the physical address of the host is required. So the IP 
address must be resolved to a physical address.
When two hosts in Ethernet communicate, they must know each other’s MAC 
address. Every host maintains an IP-MAC address translation table, which is known 
as the ARP mapping table. A series of maps between IP addresses and MAC 
addresses of other hosts are stored in the ARP mapping table. When a dynamic 
ARP mapping entry is not in use for a long time, the host will remove it from the 
mapping table to save memory space and shorten the search interval. 
Example: IP Address 
Resolution
Host A and Host B are on the same network segment. The IP address of Host A is 
IP_A and the IP address of Host B is IP_B. Host A wants to transmit packets to Host 
B. Host A checks its own ARP mapping table first to make sure that there are 
corresponding ARP entries of IP_B in the table. If the corresponding MAC address 
is found, Host A will use the MAC address in the ARP mapping table to 
encapsulate the IP packet in an Ethernet frame and send it to Host B. If the 
corresponding MAC address is not found, Host A will store the IP packet in the 
queue waiting for transmission, and broadcast an ARP request to attempt to 
resolve the MAX address of Host B. 
The ARP request packet contains the IP address of Host B and the IP address and 
MAC address of Host A. Since the ARP request packet is broadcast, all hosts on 
the network segment receive the request. However, only the requested host (i.e., 
Host B) needs to process the request. Host B will first store the IP address and the 
MAC address of the request sender (Host A) from the ARP request packet in its 
own ARP mapping table. Host B will then generate an ARP reply packet and add 
the MAC address of Host B before sending it to Host A. The reply packet will be 
sent directly to Host A instead of being broadcast. Upon receiving the reply 
packet, Host A will extract the IP address and the corresponding MAC address of 
Host B and add them to its own ARP mapping table. Then Host A will send Host B 
all the packets standing in the queue.
Normally, dynamic ARP executes and automatically attempts to resolve the IP 
address to an Ethernet MAC address with no intervention from the administrator. 
Configuring ARP
The ARP mapping table can be maintained dynamically or manually. Addresses 
that are mapped manually are referred to as static ARP. The user can display, add, 
or delete the entries in the ARP mapping table through manual commands.