plcfwd.1

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plcfwd(1) Qualcomm Atheros Open Powerline Toolkit plcfwd(1)

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 origi‐
nating 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 deci‐
mal. 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 hexa‐
decimal. 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 com‐
mand 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 hexa‐
decimal 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.