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Archive for March 13th, 2015

AS/400 Ethernet Type May Cause Problems

March 13th, 2015 No comments

After a core network switch reload, a strange problem occured for 5250 terminal sessions to an AS/400. Sometimes they worked and sometimes not. The same behaviour was observed using ping from within the same IP subnet.

The problem appeared to be the Ethernet framing on the AS/400. The ARP replies kept changing between type SNAP and ARPA. An ARP entry on the core routers showed the mac address of the AS/400 but using Ethernet “SNAP” encapsulation, rather than “ARPA”, the latter of which is the default encapsulation type for the Cisco 6500’s which we were using. Read more…