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Is it possible to check if host with secific MAC address are 'alive' ?

I do NOT want to use 3-rd layer ISO/OSI and ICMP ping message

maseth
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  • Why? Are you aware that the MAC address can be changed by the user, so recording them elsewhere is basically futile? – user207421 Aug 15 '12 at 22:25

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You can do an ARP Ping. This only works when you are physically on the same network segment. Read more about this on Wikipedia's ARP Ping article.

Note that there are two different implementations of arping, one which can ping MAC addresses to resolve them to IP addresses and one that doesn't. The implementation in the iproute2 package does not do what you want, but Thomas Habets implementatation does. This is also explained in the Wikipedia ARP Ping article

Kaii
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  • Arping nedd to know IP address, as I mentioned in question I do not want to use 3rd layer of OSI – maseth Aug 15 '12 at 21:29
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    @mason thats just not true. Edited my post to include a [manpage with better explanations](http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man8/arping.8.html). – Kaii Aug 15 '12 at 22:41