Re: Get the external IP address from a Linux box

[Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org>]

Le 28/05/2018 à 23:14, Pascal Hambourg a écrit :
> Le 28/05/2018 à 13:54, Alan Greenberger a écrit :
> > You are mostly correct.  However, I have one machine on which the
> > response to
> > /usr/sbin/arp -n
> > shows two lines with the HWaddress of the router, one with the internal
> > address as you said and the other with the external address.  I have no
> > idea what made arp see the external address.
>
> Thinking of it, a router following the "weak host" model (like Linux 
> does) can advertise any local address on any interface. It can be tested 
> with arping. However I am failing to imagine any plausible scenario 
> which could lead a host on the internal LAN to have the router's 
> external IP address in its ARP cache. It means that either :
> - the host sends an ARP query for the router's external IP address

I guess this could happen if the host has a direct default route (no 
gateway) and the router acts as an ARP proxy. Quite an unusual setup.

> - the router sends an ARP query to the host from its external IP address

I checked that the latter can happen when the router must send a packet 
to the host with its external address as source and must resolve the 
host's address. Then the ARP query source IP address is the external 
address, and the destination host stores it in its ARP cache.

Any idea why the router would send packets to this host from its 
external address ?