Ping reply problem

[ohalnet]

Hi mates : )

Here is my question,

I have drawn a figure and ask my question on the figure in order to make your work easier.

please visit the link below and see my question.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v211/feyk38/linux.jpg

OR

you can read it below,

here is the problem:

There are 2 PCs (PC A and PC B)and one ethernet switch.

---PC B---
PC B(LINUX RED HAT 8.0) has 4 fast ethernet cards installed on it. All four ethernet ports of the PC B are connected to the switch.
Assigned IP Addresses On computer B’s ethernet ports:
eth 0: 10.10.10.1
eth 0: 10.10.10.2
eth 0: 10.10.10.3
eth 0: 10.10.10.4

---PC A---
PC A has 1 fast ethernet card installed on it.
4 command Line windows are open on the PC,
a ping command runs on each window at the same time.

Command Line Window 1: > ping 10.10.10.1
Command Line Window 2: > ping 10.10.10.2
Command Line Window 3: > ping 10.10.10.3
Command Line Window 4: > ping 10.10.10.4

---------------
Purpose of the setup: Ping 4 ethernet ports of PC B from PC A at the same time

Problem: Since all the IP addresses of the PC B are in the same network (10.10.10.0) ping replies come back to PC A only from eth1 (It is the first ethernet port shown on the routing table of the PC B).

From PC A’s point of view, it looks ping replies come from all 4 ports. But when you unplug the eth1's connection, all of the 4 windows on PC A shows: “request time out”

Question: We want PC B to reply packets from all of it’s 4 ports. Is it possible to make this setup work on Linux (with the same IP addresses).

PS: I know assigning different network IP addresses to PC B’s ports is much better idea but cant do it due to my unique situation.
Strange but with the same setup and same IP assignment, it works properly if the PC B’s operating system is XP

I'll really appreciate If anybody can help me, thanks in advance : )

[Ivan Ferreira]

Probably, for this kind of configuration, it would be better if you use channel bonding:

http://linux-ip.net/html/linux-ip.html#ether-bonding

[Ivan Ferreira]

Also, see a good explanation of your situation here:

http://lwn.net/Articles/45373/

You may get what you want using arp_filter:

http://lwn.net/Articles/45386/#arp_filter