box-to-box redundancy and ARP question

[damian.johnstone]

In a box-to-box failover scenario are the MAC addresses of both active and standby CSS11503s supposed to match up? The reason I ask relates to an issue where without clearing the ARP cache on the Default GW (a PIX with a default ARP timeout of 240 minutes) all services were unreachable via the VIPs.

[Gilles Dufour]

the addresses are not the same but the CSS sends a gratuitous arp upon failover to advertise the new mac-address.

Gilles.

[damian.johnstone]

Its more so an issue with the PIX firewalls ignoring the gratuitous arp broadcast and not update its ARP table until the arp timeout.