VRRP Router sending an ARP request

[srinivasraayi]

Hello guys,

Had this question related to VRRP. We all know VRRP master router responds to ARP requests sent by the end hosts with the Virtual MAC address.

My question is, what would be the source MAC address when the VRRP router itself sends an ARP request? Will it be a physical MAC (MAC address of the VLAN) or the virtual MAC address?

Thank you.

Regards,

Sri

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

The source should be the virtual MAC address:

From RFC 2338:

When a VRRP router restarts or boots, it SHOULD not send any ARP
   messages with its physical MAC address for the IP address it owns, it

   should only send ARP messages that include Virtual MAC addresses

link

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2338.txt

HTH

[srinivasraayi]

Hi Reza,

Thank you for the response.

I did go through the RFC earlier and I understand this happens when the router restarts or boots. However, my question is related to a stable network when the VRRP router does not have an ARP entry for a certain host and if it has to resolve the IP of the host, what would be the source MAC in the ARP request sent by the router?

Or am I missing something?