Chapter 23 Configuring Dynamic ARP Inspection

Understanding Dynamic ARP Inspection

Dynamic ARP inspection ensures that hosts (on untrusted interfaces) connected to a switch running dynamic ARP inspection do not poison the ARP caches of other hosts in the network. However, dynamic ARP inspection does not prevent hosts in other portions of the network from poisoning the caches of the hosts that are connected to a switch running dynamic ARP inspection.

In cases in which some switches in a VLAN run dynamic ARP inspection and other switches do not, configure the interfaces connecting such switches as untrusted. However, to validate the bindings of packets from nondynamic ARP inspection switches, configure the switch running dynamic ARP inspection with ARP ACLs. When you cannot determine such bindings, at Layer 3, isolate switches running dynamic ARP inspection from switches not running dynamic ARP inspection switches. For configuration information, see the “Configuring ARP ACLs for Non-DHCP Environments” section on page 23-8.

Note Depending on the setup of the DHCP server and the network, it might not be possible to validate a given ARP packet on all switches in the VLAN.

Rate Limiting of ARP Packets

The switch CPU performs dynamic ARP inspection validation checks; therefore, the number of incoming ARP packets is rate-limited to prevent a denial-of-service attack. By default, the rate for untrusted interfaces is 15 packets per second (pps). Trusted interfaces are not rate-limited. You can change this setting by using the ip arp inspection limit interface configuration command.

When the rate of incoming ARP packets exceeds the configured limit, the switch places the port in the error-disabled state. The port remains in that state until you intervene. You can use the errdisable recovery global configuration command to enable error disable recovery so that ports automatically emerge from this state after a specified timeout period.

Note The rate limit for an EtherChannel is applied separately to each switch in a stack. For example, if a limit of 20 pps is configured on the EtherChannel, each switch with ports in the EtherChannel can carry up to 20 pps. If any switch exceeds the limit, the entire EtherChannel is placed into the error-disabled state.

For configuration information, see the “Limiting the Rate of Incoming ARP Packets” section on page 23-10.

Relative Priority of ARP ACLs and DHCP Snooping Entries

Dynamic ARP inspection uses the DHCP snooping binding database for the list of valid IP-to-MAC address bindings.

ARP ACLs take precedence over entries in the DHCP snooping binding database. The switch uses ACLs only if you configure them by using the ip arp inspection filter vlan global configuration command. The switch first compares ARP packets to user-configured ARP ACLs. If the ARP ACL denies the ARP packet, the switch also denies the packet even if a valid binding exists in the database populated by DHCP snooping.

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Cisco Systems 3750E manual Rate Limiting of ARP Packets, Relative Priority of ARP ACLs and Dhcp Snooping Entries, 23-4