I believe your right that it's essentially a "by convention" type of 
function and not in an RFC.  Although, every OS that I've tried it on, 
both Unix and Windows, have performed this way.

Regards,
Kent

On 24 May 2001, at 22:23, Bob Vance wrote:

> I've never understood why setting DG to itself causes an ARP request
> for the *target* IP address? Normally, for non-local addresses, the
> ARP would be for the appropriate gateway, (in this case, itself, which
> would be somewhat ridiculous), not the target. This must be a special
> hack to the lookup code -- at least I didn't find it in the RFCs --
> and as such, not necessarily universally supported. Although, it makes
> as good sense as any as a way to cause an ARP for a non-local address,
> which must be somehow configurable in the clients for Proxy ARP to
> work in this case (the subnet mask thingy works because the client
> thinks that the target is a local address, anyway).
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------
> Tks        | 
> BV         | 
> Sr. Technical Consultant,  SBM, A Gates/Arrow Co.
> Vox 770-623-3430           11455 Lakefield Dr.
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> =================================================
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2001 6:05 PM To:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: ARP versus Proxy-arp [7:5664]
> 
> 
> Chuck,
> 
> Proxy-arp is also useful for cases where you have multiple
> candidate DG's on the same segment and for whatever reason you
> can't or don't want to use HSRP/VRRP, IRDP or passive RIP.
> 
> You can achieve a certain amount of load-balancing and failover
> using proxy-arp by pointing a hosts DG to its own address and
> setting the timeout for arp entries very low on the end-stations.
> 
> Course, this increases the amount of ARP bcasts on the segment
> and is, essentially, a "cool hack", but it does work.
> 
> Regards,
> Kent
> 
> On 23 May 2001, at 22:36, Chuck Larrieu wrote:
> 
> > At the risk of becoming another Bob Vance......
> >
> > I'm reading Doug Comer's TCP/IP reference, on the assumption that it
> > can't hurt to really get into how TCP/IP works.
> >
> > Proxy-arp versus normal  arp.
> >
> > A host does not know the physical address of another host so it
> > sends out an ARP request. If the host in question lies on another
> > network, a router responds to that request. Proxy ARP, correct?
> >
> > A host through it's TCP stack does the XOR and determines that a
> > host lies on another network. The host therefore sends the packet to
> > the device indicated as its default gateway in its configuration. It
> > sends an ARP request for the MAC of the default gateway. Normal ARP?
> >
> > So in other words, proxy arp may be viewed as something of an
> > obsolete protocol / operation in that most modern TCP stacks contain
> > the mechanisms for doing the network XOR determination, and then
> > using the default gateway. A modern stack would recognize that a
> > host is on a different network and go the default gateway route, so
> > to speak.
> >
> > In other words, the necessity for proxy arp is eliminated for the
> > most part because of the default gateway concept and the modern TCP
> > stack.
> >
> > Has it sunk through this thick head finally?
> >
> > PS Comer states that proxy arp is aka arp hack. :->
> >
> > Chuck
> >
> > One IOS to forward them all.
> > One IOS to find them.
> > One IOS to summarize them all
> > And in the routing table bind them.
> >
> > -JRR Chambers-
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