Which tools read /etc/ethers, what do they expect in there, what do they do with the contents? Is it only used to show names to a user or take names from a user instead of MAC addresses, like in tcpdump?
The Linux man page says the entries in /etc/ethers should be numeric IP addresses or names which can be resolved by DNS, while the FreeBSD man page says there should be fully qualified names in /etc/ethers which should also be in /etc/hosts. But does really some tool get a MAC address from somewhere, converts it to a name using /etc/ethers, and then expects to resolve that name into an IP address? I would like to put names of hosts or interfaces in there, which don't necessarily have an IP address or no entry in /etc/hosts or DNS, like switches, access points or routers with multiple interfaces, interfaces of a Linux bridge, etc. And may the entry in /etc/ethers contain a '.' to separate a name and an interface number or VLAN ID, like host.0 and host.1 for the LAN and WLAN interface? Steve
