Windows 7 keeps sending many ARP requests asking for the default gateway but actually there is active traffic going, why?
The problem I am looking at is weird.
The default gateway is present in Windows 7's ARP table as a dynamic entry.
There are ping traffic going on between Win 7 and the default gateway. The gateway does reply to those ARP requests.
According to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949589, if the entry is in the "Reachable" state, Windows Vista TCP/IP hosts do not send ARP requests
to the network.
So my first question is why Win7 needs to send out the ARP request when it actually knows the MAC address of the default gateway?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949589 also mentions After the entry is successfully created in the neighbor cache, the entry may change to
the "Reachable" state if the entry meets certain conditions. Can you explain what the
certain conditions include?
I have packet capture on hand that I really want to share, but what is the best way to attach it to this thread?
The laptop is a Lenovo T410 running Windows 7 Enterprise 32-bit.
Thanks for reading.
May 25th, 2011 1:49pm