Ubuntu Manpage: plcfwd - Qualcomm Atheros Forward Configuration

Provided by: plc-utils-extra_0.0.6+git20230504.1ba7d5a0-1_amd64

NAME

       plcfwd - Qualcomm Atheros Forward Configuration

SYNOPSIS

       plcfwd [options] [device] [device] [...]

DESCRIPTION

       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.

OPTIONS

-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.

ARGUMENTS

       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.

DEVICES

       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.

REFERENCES

       See the Qualcomm Atheros HomePlug AV Firmware Technical  Reference  Manual  for  technical
       information.

DISCLAIMER

       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.

EXAMPLES

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.

CREDITS

        Charles Maier