This program is similar to ping(1), but tests connectivity at the
link layer (layer-2) instead of the network layer (layer-3).
HPUX has linkloop support for ages, and lately I googled a little
and found that link-layer connectivity loopback testing is part
of the IEEE 802.2LLC standard.
So I went and written:
- linkloop for Linux.
- linkloop_reply as a user space reply program. Used for
testing against Linux until the Linux kernel has native
support for this protocol (in my TODO :-)
- lanscan is a small utility to show local interfaces
with their mac addresses. Yes I know 'ip link' gives
the same information, I just wanted to play with some
ioctls :-)
To get me started I grabbed some examples from spak
http://www.xenos.net/software/spak/
(Which wasn't compiling cleanly on my machine BTW).
It was tested against HPUX-11.0 and Linux (when running linkloop_reply)
both ways.
My linkloop accepts MAC address in:
- HPUX notation (0x......)
- Colon separated (00:BC:.....)
- A name from /etc/ethers