ARP question

[Jacques B.]

> Along with that, ARP requests are only sent to the local network and not
> "the world".  They don't survive past a router since, as noted above, their
> purpose is to obtain the MAC address equated to an IP address and MAC
> addresses are only used on the local subnet.
>
> A network configuration error could explain what you are seeing.  However,
> without additional information we can't help much.
>
Good point.  Something is obviously trying to communicate.  I'd look
at the output of Netstat, and have a look at running processes.  I
haven't done traffic analysis on it, but perhaps a bittorrent
application or P2P application might cause that type of loud traffic
on the network.  Or an IM client maybe?  In the meantime the only
thing they should be looking for would be your gateway I would think.
I'd look at my routing table and my arp table as well.

Can you attribute the IPs they are looking for to another system on
your network at some point?  Do you have an NFS share or some other
remote file system on the network that could be causing your PC to
repeatedly try and identify it on the network to connect to it?  Or do
you have another PC on the network that streams music or videos across
the network to an application on the PC in question?

Are all the ARP requests from your own system (your MAC as originating
the request)?  Or are you running a wireless setup where others may be
trying to connect to it (perhaps even unknown to them if they are
running Windows with it setup to connect to the first available
wireless network)?

Can you check the DHCP log on your router to see what IPs are
allocated and to what MAC addresses?

Jacques B.