On Wed, 9 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.networking, in article
<slrng7a0g3.8sn.joliver@ns.sdsitehosting.net>, John Oliver wrote:

>I got an email from a user saying that he used to be able to (a long
>time ago)
>
>arping -I eth0 00:1a:64:c2:cg:5a

I'm going to guess that's two typ0s for the price of one - the option
is a lower-case i, and while 00:1a:64: is an IBM prefix, the 'g' is
not a possible character in the address.

>and get the IP address of the MAC. Now, he can't.

What happens - does the computer catch fire or something?

>I've tried on a couple of different Linux systems, and it doesn't
>work for me, either.

[compton ~]# arping -c 3 -i eth0 08:00:20:d2:f9:33
ARPING 08:00:20:d2:f9:33
60 bytes from 192.0.2.102 (08:00:20:d2:f9:33): icmp_seq=0 time=2.618 msec
60 bytes from 192.0.2.102 (08:00:20:d2:f9:33): icmp_seq=1 time=849.009 usec
60 bytes from 192.0.2.102 (08:00:20:d2:f9:33): icmp_seq=2 time=886.917 usec

--- 08:00:20:d2:f9:33 statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% unanswered
[compton ~]# exit
[compton ~]$

>Anyone know what's up with this? The man page doesn't help... it seems
>to indicate that the above should work just fine.

What happens - does the computer catch fire or something? Have you
tried to use a packet sniffer to see what is going out over the line?
Are you using a switched network (as opposed to a hub or coax)?

Old guy