Friday, December 02, 2005

PIX proxy arp caused weird problem

Inside inferface has 3 server, sometime one server cannot ping other server.

That's because PIX answer the arp which cause wrong MAC for the IP. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=888816

sysopt noproxyarp

ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) is a layer two protocol that resolves an IP address to a physical address, also called a Media Access Controller (MAC) address. A host sends an ARP request asking "Who is this IP?" The device owning the IP should reply with "Hey, I am the one, here's my MAC address."

Proxy ARP refers to a gateway device, in this case, the firewall, "impersonating" an IP address and returning its own MAC address to answer an ARP request for another device.

The sysopt noproxyarp command is used to disable Proxy ARPs on an interface from the command-line interface. By default, the PIX Firewall responds to ARP requests directed at the PIX Firewall's interface IP addresses as well as to ARP requests for any static or global address defined on the PIX Firewall interface (which are proxy ARP requests).

The sysopt noproxyarp if_name command lets you disable proxy ARP request responses on a PIX Firewall interface. However, this command does not disable (non-proxy) ARP requests on the PIX Firewall interface itself. Consequently, if you use the sysopt noproxyarp if_name command, the PIX Firewall no longer responds to ARP requests for the addresses in the static, global, and nat 0 commands for that interface but does respond to ARP requests for its interface IP addresses.

To disable Proxy ARPs on the inside interface:
sysopt noproxyarp inside

To enable Proxy ARPs on the inside interface:
no sysopt noproxyarp inside

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