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Date:      27 Nov 2002 12:05:14 -0800
From:      Mark <mw@lanfear.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Cc:        mw@lanfear.com
Subject:   ARP flood = Firewall locks up???
Message-ID:  <1038427514.2997.22.camel@donburi>

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Hi!

   Not being a terribly monstrous expert with FreeBSD firewalls, I was
quite relieved when I managed to get my FreeBSD 4.3 machine up and
running with a "simple" firewall and NAT for my subnet to my local cable
modem provider.

   The firewall configuration was, indeed, the pure 'simple', with a
couple of extra rules to allow DNS (udp to and from 53).

   Now, the problem is, about three weeks ago, I started seeing a FLOOD
of ARP messages on xl0, my interface to the internet over the cable
modem.  They are mostly of the nature:


11:45:43.957332 arp who-has 12-228-5-117.client.attbi.com tell
12-228-0-1.client.attbi.com11:45:44.041211 arp who-has
24-41-43-3.attbi.cable.earthlink.net tell
24-41-43-1.attbi.cable.earthlink.net
11:45:44.054945 arp who-has 12-228-13-250.client.attbi.com tell
12-228-12-1.client.attbi.com
11:45:44.286922 arp who-has 12-228-13-19.client.attbi.com tell
12-228-12-1.client.attbi.com
11:45:44.301048 arp who-has 12-228-8-255.client.attbi.com tell
12-228-8-1.client.attbi.com
11:45:44.950060 arp who-has 12-228-116-206.client.attbi.com tell
12-228-116-1.client.attbi.com
11:45:45.161916 arp who-has 12-228-117-80.client.attbi.com tell
12-228-116-1.client.attbi.com
11:45:45.262087 arp who-has 12-228-6-168.client.attbi.com tell
12-228-0-1.client.attbi.com
11:45:45.326111 arp who-has 10.111.149.5 tell 10.111.148.1
11:45:45.393260 arp who-has 12-228-5-28.client.attbi.com tell
12-228-0-1.client.attbi.com
11:45:45.418636 arp who-has 12-228-4-225.client.attbi.com tell
12-228-0-1.client.attbi.com
11:45:45.420402 arp who-has 10.134.74.97 tell 10.134.64.1
11:45:45.478295 arp who-has 10.134.78.125 tell 10.134.64.1


I also see a lot of:

11:45:47.290518 12-228-xxx-yyy.client.attbi.com.glogger >
ns1.attbi.com.domain:  60392+ PTR? 175.71.134.10.in-addr.arpa. (44)
11:45:47.325525 ns1.attbi.com.domain >
12-228-xxx-yyy.client.attbi.com.glogger:  60392 NXDomain* 0/1/0 (112)
(DF)
11:45:47.326433 12-228-xxx-yyy.client.attbi.com.scoremgr >
ns1.attbi.com.domain:  60393+ PTR? 35.106.46.207.in-addr.arpa. (44)
11:45:47.381075 ns1.attbi.com.domain >
12-228-xxx-yyy.client.attbi.com.scoremgr:  60393* 1/0/0 (84) (DF)
11:45:47.382676 12-228-xxx-yyy.client.attbi.com.imsldoc >
ns1.attbi.com.domain:  60394+ PTR? 168.6.228.12.in-addr.arpa. (43)
11:45:47.418767 ns1.attbi.com.domain >
12-228-xxx-yyy.client.attbi.com.imsldoc:  60394* 1/2/2 (154) (DF)
11:45:47.420016 12-228-xxx-yyy.client.attbi.com.2036 >
ns1.attbi.com.domain:  60395+ PTR? 28.5.228.12.in-addr.arpa. (42)
11:45:47.456806 ns1.attbi.com.domain >
12-228-xxx-yyy.client.attbi.com.2036:  60395* 1/2/2 PTR . (152) (DF)
11:45:47.458064 12-228-xxx-yyy.client.attbi.com.2037 >
ns1.attbi.com.domain:  60396+ PTR? 85.67.134.10.in-addr.arpa. (43)
11:45:47.492268 ns1.attbi.com.domain >
12-228-xxx-yyy.client.attbi.com.2037:  60396 NXDomain* 0/1/0 (111) (DF)


   This is fine, although a bit wonky, but then all of a sudden, the
FreeBSD server would stop forwarding packets to the internet after about
6 hours.  It would slow down visibly after 4, and simply be dead after
six.  Rebooting would solve the problem, but then then would be lockup
in another 6 hours or so.  Setting the firewall to "open" fixes the
problem, but obviously not in a good way :-(



   Questions:

   1. Any ideas what this ARP flood is?  Is it some tool the ISP is
using or something?

   2. Any idea what's up with the firewall?  Why would it be locking
up?  I must confess to being a bit of a firewall newbie, so i'm not 100%
sure how to go about getting it to give me more information, logging,
etc ...  I might just upgrade to 4.7 and see what happens, but I'd
rather understand this first ....


   Any suggestions would be appreciated...

   Thanks,
   mark.




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