Along with that, ARP requests are only sent to the local network and not "the world". They don't survive past a router since, as noted above, their purpose is to obtain the MAC address equated to an IP address and MAC addresses are only used on the local subnet. A network configuration error could explain what you are seeing. However, without additional information we can't help much.
Good point. Something is obviously trying to communicate. I'd look at the output of Netstat, and have a look at running processes. I haven't done traffic analysis on it, but perhaps a bittorrent application or P2P application might cause that type of loud traffic on the network. Or an IM client maybe? In the meantime the only thing they should be looking for would be your gateway I would think. I'd look at my routing table and my arp table as well. Can you attribute the IPs they are looking for to another system on your network at some point? Do you have an NFS share or some other remote file system on the network that could be causing your PC to repeatedly try and identify it on the network to connect to it? Or do you have another PC on the network that streams music or videos across the network to an application on the PC in question? Are all the ARP requests from your own system (your MAC as originating the request)? Or are you running a wireless setup where others may be trying to connect to it (perhaps even unknown to them if they are running Windows with it setup to connect to the first available wireless network)? Can you check the DHCP log on your router to see what IPs are allocated and to what MAC addresses? Jacques B.
