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Old 10th November 2008
rex rex is offline
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Default MAC address to IP

Is there a way be which I can find IP address on a device on the LAN of which I know the MAC address.

I'm trying to automate something for which I need to know the IP of the device which may change. As I'll be using it in the perl script and hopefully port it to C/C++ in future I need a way to do it from the CLI no GUI tool .
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Old 10th November 2008
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% arp -a | grep 'mac_address_here'

?
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Old 10th November 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by anomie View Post
% arp -a | grep 'mac_address_here'

?
problem with this is that it'll work only if that device is in my arp table. Isn't there a way in which LAN can be quarried for MAC address.
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Old 10th November 2008
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If you mean queried, no.. sounds like you need to brush up on your basic networking skills.

When a system on your network attempts to connect to an IP address, an action not unlike a DNS lookup occurs.

Host #1 broadcasts a "Who is Host #2" message to the subnet, Host #2 notices this request and responds to Host #1 saying "That's me, I'm Host #2!".

Can you determine the MAC address of every system? Yes.. via brute force, there is no passive method I'm aware of.
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Old 10th November 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rex View Post
Isn't there a way in which LAN can be quarried for MAC address.
The network itself? No.
How do your machines get IP addresses?
Is there any dedicated DHCP server?
If yes, what's the OS? Could you query your server's arp cache through your perl script?
If no (i.e. your router has a DHCP server role as well), I'm afraid you can't do much, apart from trying to find a way to keep your arp cache up-to-date.
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Old 10th November 2008
rex rex is offline
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Quote:
How do your machines get IP addresses?
My machine gets IP from DHCP server, But the devices are assigned static IP but the people in charge of those devices keep on changing the IP.
Quote:
Is there any dedicated DHCP server?
There must be a DHCP derver, but as those devices are assigned ststic IP I dont know if there's any point querring DHCP server on top of that half of the subnet IP are reserved of static assignments so DHCP server will not use those IP.
Quote:
If yes, what's the OS? Could you query your server's arp cache through your perl script?
Chances are that it could be a cysco router. But I don't know network administrator will allow me to do that.
Quote:
If no (i.e. your router has a DHCP server role as well), I'm afraid you can't do much, apart from trying to find a way to keep your arp cache up-to-date.
Hmm. Then I'll need to have entire 10.30.1.X subnet into my systems arp cache. One way I could of ding this is to ping all devices (could be very time consuming) and what if I just finished runing ping and somebody changed the IP of one of the devices .

I think I'll have to come up with some other way.
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Old 10th November 2008
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checkout arpwatch: ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/arpwatch.tar.gz

or maybe this might do:
Code:
#!/bin/sh
# -ephemera

net=10.30.1             # 10.30.1/24

[ $# -lt 1 -o `id -u` -ne 0 ] && exit 1
x=1
while [ $x -le 254 ] ; do
	arp -d $net.$x >/dev/null 2>&1 
        printf "\rScanning $net.$x "
        ping -c3 $net.$x 1>/dev/null &
        x=$(($x + 1)) 
done
while [ `pgrep -P $$ ping | wc -l` -ne 0 ] ; do
        printf .
        sleep 1
done
printf " Done.\n"   
arp -na | grep $1 | sed 's/.*(\(.*\)) at .*/\1  /'
# ./script 0a:0b:0c:0d:0e:ff

Last edited by ephemera; 10th November 2008 at 10:04 PM.
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Old 11th November 2008
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To fill your arp table, just ping the broadcast address for the subnet. For example: ping 192.168.0.255. That will cause every machine on that subnet to respond, and you will get arp entries for every machine on the subnet.

Check the output of ifconfig for the current broadcast address.
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Old 11th November 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ephemera View Post
+1

arpwatch is a really handy (passive) layer 2 sniffer that can help identify network problems.

---

I'd also add to all this:

Quote:
Originally Posted by rex
But the devices are assigned static IP but the people in charge of those devices keep on changing the IP.
This is the real problem. The network needs to be better managed, IMO. We don't call one another up and say "hey, can I get your MAC address?" for network communication purposes. There should be a coherent network design and a better change control process in place.
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Old 11th November 2008
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Phoenix,

As in the OP's case, suppose host A has an entry in the arp cache for host B. B changes its IP before A's arp cache expires.
Now if A tries to send a packet (using the stale cache entry) to B then what will happen?
And is it documented or implementation dependent?

Last edited by ephemera; 11th November 2008 at 07:14 PM.
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