70 CHAPTER 4: NETWORK PROTOCOL OPERATION
Figure 19 IP Address Configuration Networking
1Enter VLAN interface 1.
[SW7750] interface vlan 1
2Configure the IP address for VLAN interface 1.
[SW7750-vlan-interface1] ip address 129.2.2.1 255.255.255.0
Troubleshooting an IP
Address Configuration
If the Ethernet Switch cannot ping a certain host on the LAN, proceed as follows:
1Determine which VLAN includes the port connected to the host. Check whether
the VLAN has been configured with the VLAN interface. Determine whether the IP
address of the VLAN interface and the host are on the same network segment.
2If the configuration is correct, enable ARP debugging on the switch from user
level, and check whether or not the switch can correctly send and receive ARP
packets. If it can only send but not receive the ARP packets, there are probably
errors at the Ethernet physical layer.
Configuring Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)
An IP address cannot be directly used for communication between network
devices, because devices can only identify MAC addresses. An IP address is the
address of a host at the network layer. To send data packets through the network
layer to the destination host, the physical address of the host is required. So the IP
address must be resolved to a physical address.
When two hosts in Ethernet communicate, they must know each other’s MAC
address. Every host maintains an IP-MAC address translation table, which is known
as the ARP mapping table. A series of maps between IP addresses and MAC
addresses of other hosts are stored in the ARP mapping table. When a dynamic
ARP mapping entry is not in use for a long time, the host will remove it from the
mapping table to save memory space and shorten the search interval.
Example: IP Address Resolution
Host A and Host B are on the same network segment. The IP address of Host A is
IP_A and the IP address of Host B is IP_B. Host A wants to transmit packets to Host
B. Host A checks its own ARP mapping table first to make sure that there are
corresponding ARP entries of IP_B in the table. If the corresponding MAC address
is found, Host A will use the MAC address in the ARP mapping table to
encapsulate the IP packet in an Ethernet frame and send it to Host B. If the
PC
Console cable
Switch