9fans archive / 1998 / 10 / 40 / prev next From: Charles M. Hannum root@iha... Subject: [9fans] IL/NIC incompatibility Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 18:18:03 -0400 (EDT) > would implementing the timeout have helped? > the usual one tends to be fairly big, > to avoid arping when nothing changes for days, > if not months, and you'd then have been wondering > why things suddenly worked after 5, 10 or 20 minutes > (if you'd had the patience). Uh, what's supposed to happen is that a machine coming up will send a broadcast ARP request for its own address, and all the other machines on the network will see this and cache the address. Provided you don't have two machines with the same address simultaneously, this provides instant switchover.