My DECT transmitter gets its IP / DHCP address from a PABX. As the IP address does change over time, I cannot use a normal ping sensor to monitor if it is up.

Knowing the MAC address, how can I monitor if this DECT transmitter is up?

Article Comments

PTF.PingMacAddress

Strictly spoken, it is not possible to ping a MAC address as ICMP (ping) and MAC use different layers of the OSI model.

But, there is a workaround!

Custom Sensor PTF.PingMacAddress uses the ARP table to lookup the IP address that is owned by the MAC address. If there is no ARP entry, an ARP request package is sent to the DHCP range. The IP that responds with the correct MAC address is pinged and its response time is returned.

The sensor uses the following parameters:

-m=MAC -s=DHCPStart -e=DHCPEnd

 
-m=   The MAC address to ping.
-s=   The start address of the DHCP range.
-i=   The end address of the DHCP range.

and can be downloaded here.

Note: any switches and routers between probe and device need to support layer 2 of the OSI model.


Mar, 2013 - Permalink

Hi, how does this work, I have found the parameters below:

-m=MAC -s=DHCPStart -e=DHCPEnd

I assume if I would like to use the mac address ping then the querry would be as follows:

-m=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx


Jul, 2021 - Permalink

Please start by running the .exe with its parameters from a command prompt. This will produce some extra output that might help you in getting the parameters right.


Jul, 2021 - Permalink