10.4.5 does not respond to arps (arp requests)

[brain21]

This could be a driver issue. Dell PC with an Intel Pro 100 NIC in it. Dual booted, running OSX 10.4.5 (Maxxuss version)

 

I can't ftp into the Mac. Then on the mac I ping something (anything), and all of a sudden I can ftp into the Mac from the linux box.

 

I traced the connections trhough the routers following the whole path. The ICMP Echo requests are going out of the windows box into the first router, out of the first router, and into the 2nd router. The 2nd router's 2nd interface is on the same subnet as the Mac. Now if I am pinging another box on that Mac subnet I get the ICMP Echo replies back. But not from the Mac. The router right in front of the Mac gets the Echo requests in on one interface, and on the other interface connected to the Mac's subnet there are no Echo requests going out. That router keeps arping for the Mac asking "Whos got 10.10.10.10? Pleast tell 10.10.10.1" - the Mac never responds to the arp request at all.

 

Now, the second I run "arp" on the Mac, BOOM I get connectivity and everything works fine. If I ping something from the mac, everything works fine. This is because the Mac is now sending the Arp requests and getting the replies back, and not just sending replies out.

 

As soon as the arp cache on the router connected to the Mac times out and gets cleaned, I can no longer access the Mac again until I "wake it up" by arping or whatever.

 

Anyone else run into this? Is there an easy, quickie solution other than a cron job?

 

I'm going to try another NIC and see if that changes anything. Otherwise I need to figure out the Arp cache timeout on the router and setup a cron job on the Mac to run the arp command when the arp cache gets cleaned out.

 

Thanks,

 

Brain21