Oki B4300 Network User's Guide for OkiLAN 6020e - Page 143

Section 4 - Appendix B - Application Considerations Configuration Files The purpose of RARP is to look up a 32-bit IP address given a 48-bit network hardware address. The RARP server (which is usually a UNIX workstation running a rarpd daemon) performs this function using two configuration files and one or more daemons. The configuration files are "/etc/hosts" and "/etc/ethers" and the daemon is called rarpd. A name can be assigned to any device on a network and is arbitrary. For the following examples the name used for the OkiLAN 6020e is OKIPRINTER. Remember that this name is arbitrary; a customer can assign any name. /etc/hosts: The "/etc/hosts" file is where each entry maps a host name to an IP address. An example entry is shown below. 192.168.42.55 OKIPRINTER /etc/ethers: The "/etc/ethers" file is where each entry maps a host name to a network hardware address. An example entry is shown below. 00:02:16:17:50:A4 OKIPRINTER The following sequence of events occurs during the power up of the OkiLAN 6020e using RARP: 1. The OkiLAN 6020e powers up but does not know its IP address. However, it does know its network hardware address. 2. It sends out a RARP request message with its network hardware address. For this example, the OkiLAN 6020e address is 00:02:16:17:50:A4. 3. The rarpd daemon running on a RARP server (in this example the RARP server is a UNIX workstation) sees the RARP request along with the network hardware address in the "/etc/ethers" file. The rarpd daemon finds the host name, OKIPRINTER, listed as the name associated with the network hardware address. TCP/IP OKI OkiLAN 6020e User's Guide IV - 61