Knowledge Base

ARP -A Performs Badly When ARP Cache Contains Many Addresses

Article ID: 145587

Article Last Modified on 11/1/2006


APPLIES TO


This article was previously published under Q145587

SYMPTOMS

When you have several hundred IP addresses in your ARP cache, the execution of the arp -a command can take an hour or more. To get this many addresses in your cache, you have to increase ArpCacheLife.

CAUSE

ARP is using SNMP to retrieve the contents of the ARP cache. The SNMP agent is not designed to query large numbers of objects.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Windows NT Server and Workstation versions 3.51 and 4.0. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

Additional query words: prodnt

Keywords: kbnetwork KB145587