Ubuntu Manpage: plcfwd - Qualcomm Atheros Forward Configuration

Provided by: plc-utils-extra_0.0.6+git20250517.7fb8ac5-1_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

open-plc-utils-0.0.3                              November 2013                                        plcfwd(1)