plcfwd - Qualcomm Atheros Forward Configuration
plcfwd [options] [device] [device]
[...]
Set VLAN and MAC address lookup for tx path traffic. Setup
requests are processed by master PLC device attached to the local device.
Upon receiving the request MME, the PLC device will send a confirm MME back
with the results to the originating host.
This program is part of the Qualcomm Atheros Powerline Toolkit.
See the plc man page for an overview and installation
instructions.
- -A
- Add VLANIDs of multiple slaves to memory.
- -C
- Commit configruation to flash memory.
- -D VLANID
- Set the default VLAN ID expressed as a 32-bit decimal value.
- -e
- Redirects stderr messages to stdout. By convention status and error
messages are printed on stderr while primary program output is printed on
stdout. This option prints all output on stdout in cases where this is
desired.
- -f filename
- Read additional device addresses and VLAN IDs from the named file. This
option may appear multiple times and may appear in addition option -z.
Each occurance of this option adds one or more entries to the VLANID table
used by options -A or -R. The format used on each line of
this file is identical to that used by option -z.
- -i interface
- Select the host Ethernet interface. All requests are sent via this host
interface and only reponses received via this host interface are
recognized. The default interface is eth1 because most people use
eth0 as their principle network connection; however, if environment
string "PLC" is defined then it takes precedence over the
default interface. This option then takes precedence over either default.
- -l length
- The read data length in bytes. This option is ignored during other
operations. The length is expressed in decimal. The default is 0
bytes.
- -M state
- Enable or disable VLANID forwarding on the master. Valid states are
0 to disable and 1 but values up to 255 are
permitted. Keywords "on" and "enable"
are the same as 1. Keywords "off" and
"disable" are the same as 0.
- -o offset
- The read data offset in bytes. This option is ignored during other
operations. The offset is expressed in hexadecimal. The default is
0 bytes;
- -q
- Suppresses status messages on stderr.
- -R
- Remove VLANIDs of multiple slaves from memory.
- -S state
- Enable or disable VLANID forwarding on all slaves. Valid states are
0 to disable and 1 but values up to 255 are
permitted. Keywords "on" and "enable"
are the same as 1. Keywords "off" and
"disable" are the same as 0.
- -t timeout
-
- -v
- Prints additional information on stdout. In particular, this option dumps
outgoing Ethernet packets on stdout.
- -z
address,id[,id[,...]]
- A device address and associated VLAN IDs separated by commas. This option
may appear multiple times and may appear in addition option -f. Each
occurance of this option adds one entry to the VLANID table used by
options -A or -R. The string format used here is identical
to that used on each line of input files named by option -f.
- -?,--help
- Displays program help information on stderr. This option takes precedence
over all other options on the command line except version information.
- -!,--version
- Displays program version information on stderr. This option takes
precedence over all other options on the command line except help
information. Use this option when sending screen dumps to Atheros
technical staff.
- device
- The MAC address of some powerline device. More than one address may be
specified. If more than one address is specified then operations are
performed on each device in turn. The default address is local. See
DEVICES for information about symbolic device addresses.
Powerline devices use Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC)
addresses. A MAC address is a 48-bit value entered as 12 hexadecimal digits
in upper, lower or mixed character case. Octets may be separated with colons
for clarity. For example, "00b052000001",
"00:b0:52:00:00:01" and "00b052:000001" are valid and
equivalent.
The following MAC addresses are special and may be entered by name
instead of number.
- all
- Same as "broadcast".
- broadcast
- A synonym for the Ethernet broadcast address, FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF.
All devices, whether local, remote or foreign recognize messages sent to
this address. A remote device is any device at the far end of a powerline
connection. A foreign device is any device not manufactured by Atheros.
- local
- A synonym for the Qualcomm Atheros vendor specific Local Management
Address (LMA), 00:B0:52:00:00:01. All local Atheros devices
recognize this address but remote and foreign devices do not. A remote
device is any device at the far end of a powerline connection. A foreign
device is any device not manufactured by Atheros.
See the Qualcomm Atheros HomePlug AV Firmware Technical Reference
Manual for technical information.
Atheros HomePlug AV Vendor Specific Management Message structure
and content is proprietary to Qualcomm Atheros, Ocala FL USA. Consequently,
public information may not be available. Qualcomm Atheros reserves the right
to modify message structure and content in future firmware releases without
any obligation to notify or compensate users of this program.
The following example reads 100 bytes starting at offset
0x24. The operation is read because no other operation is
specifed using -A, -C, -R, -M or
-S. The offset is always in hexadecimal and length is always in
decimal.
# plcfwd -o 24 -l 100
The following example adds three VLAN IDs to the VLANID table on
device 00:B0:52:CA:FE:08. Option -z creates the VLANID table
and option -A adds table content to the device. This program supports
up to 10 VLAN IDs per entry but PLC firmware supports 8 maximum.
# plcfwd -A -z 00:B0:52:CA:FE:08,2300,2313,2415
The following example does the same thing but adds three table
entries. The first entry is enclosed in quotes because spaces appear in the
entry. The third entry has more than 10 VLAN IDs. The program will discard
the last ID without indication but PLC firmware should report an error
because there are more than 8 IDs reported in the request message.
# plcfwd -A -z "00:B0:52:CA:FE:08, 2300, 2313 , 2415" -z
00B052BABE01,0100 -z
00B052888888,100,200,300,400,500,600,700,800,900,1000,1100
To avoid typing the above command line many times, you can save
the entries in file plcfwd.txt, like so ...
00:B0:52:CA:FE:08, 2300, 2313 , 2415
00B052BABE01,0100
00B052888888,100,200,300,400,500,600,700,800,900,1000,1100
The next example adds these entries to the VLANID table by naming
the file that contains the entries using option -f.
# plcfwd -A -f plcfwd.txt
The next example removes the same entries to the VLANID table.
# plcfwd -R -f plcfwd.txt
Of course, you can combine options -z and -f to
cumulative effect.