How to ARP your network in two easy steps

[Chris Carey]

I did something similar when I hooked up 3 of my Linksys boxes (modded
with OpenWRT). They are running distributed wireless mode (WDS) in
order to expand the reach of the wireless netowork and I forgot to
enable spanning tree protocol (LAN_STP=1).

Apparently some loops were created within the Linksys's and it made
the switches go crazy. After enabling STP, everything was better.

On 12/29/06, Brian Hawkins <brianhks at activeclickweb.com> wrote:
> This happened the other day at my work.  I thought it was kind of
> amusing.  When the ARP of death hit my laptop (win2k) hit about 60%
> utilization.  I noticed the lights on my dlink switch were going nuts
> with activity.  A quick look in wireshark revealed the network was being
> flooded with ARP's.  The computer from which the ARP o death originated
> (winXP) had locked up.  It actually no longer booted and we had to
> reinstall it.  Even after disconnecting the origin of the ARP from the
> network we were still flooded with the same ARP request.  A couple of
> other XP boxes kept flickering their display like they wanted to "blue
> screen" but couldn't make up their mind.  The linux machines seemed
> unaffected except for the network traffic.