Should a ping6 session keep working after moving the target device's Ethernet cable to another port on the switch?

Question

This is a really basic question, but I need a sanity check to make sure my expectations are not incorrect and that what I'm seeing isn't expected behavior.

The situation is: I've got a Mac Pro running MacOS/X, and an ARM-based Linux box. Both are connected to an 8-port Extreme Networks Gigabit switch (with no Internet uplink, this is a local LAN only).

On my Mac, I start a ping6 session running, pinging the Linux box:

$ ping6 fe80::21c:abff:fe00:55e5%en1

... and start getting pong-responses back, as expected.

Then I go over to the Ethernet switch, disconnect from the Ethernet switch the cable that leads to the Linux box, and reconnect that cable to another open port on the Ethernet switch.

At this point, my expectation is that (after a pause of a few seconds), the ping6 session on my Mac would resume seeing responses.

However, my observation is that sometimes the ping6 session stops receiving responses indefinitely -- or at least, until I return the Linux box's Ethernet connection back to the switch-port that it was originally connected to. (stopping and restarting the ping6 process doesn't help; waiting longer doesn't help)

My primary question, then, is: is the behavior I'm observing expected behavior? And if so, is there anything I can do (in software) to recover from this port-change? Or if not, do you have any idea what might be going wrong? (My suspicion is that it might be an NDP issue)

Answer 1

You are correct that you should continue receiving ping replies after reconnecting the target device, even after moving it to another switch port.

stopping and restarting the ping6 process doesn't help; waiting longer doesn't help

This is not normal. Something is preventing either the ping requests or the replies from being transmitted between the two devices after the port change. I'm not familiar with the specific firewall configuration possibilities on Linux, but on a Windows machine a change in network interface can result in different firewall rules being applied.

There's also the outside chance there's something wrong with the switch itself, though that can easily be ruled out by confirming that the Linux box can communicate with the network normally while connected to the new switch port.

Answer 2

The switch has no way to know the port has been changed until the machine whose port was changed sends some traffic. If your Linux machine is quiet and not engaging in any network activity at the time you move its Ethernet cable to another port, then you will have to wait until it does send some traffic.

Once it does send traffic, the switch will pick up the fact that it has moved and update its internal tables appropriately.