.TH plcecho 1 "Mar 2014" "plc-utils-2.1.6" "Qualcomm Atheros Powerline Toolkit"

.SH NAME
plcecho - Qualcomm Atheros Loopback Utility

.SH SYNOPSIS
.BR plcecho
.RI [ options ] 
.RI [ device ] 
.RI [ device ] 
[...]

.SH DESCRIPTION
Send an Ethernet frame to some Qualcomm Atheros powerline device, using the VS_FR_LBK message, and instruct that device to echo that frame once per second for a given period of time.
The VS_FR_LBK message is intended for diagnostic purposes and has no practical application in an operational environment.
Users must sign a formal non-diclosure agreement with Atheros before using this program.

.PP
This program is part of the Qualcomm Atheros Powerline Toolkit.
See the \fBplc\fR man page for an overview and installation instructions.

.SH OPTIONS

.TP
-\fBf \fIfilename\fR
A frame description file.
When this option is present, the named file is read, converted to binary format and used that the VS_FR_LBK message payload.
It defines the Ethernet frame to be echoed by the target device.
The frame will be padded to \fB60\fR bytes or truncated to \fB1038\fR bytes, as needed, to accommodate the VS_FR_LBK message.
See \fBefsu\fR for more information on \fBframe description files\fR.
If this option is omitted, a default frame or pre-programmed frame is used.

.TP
-\fBi\fR \fIinterface\fR
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 \fBeth1\fR because most people use \fBeth0\fR 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.

.TP
.RB - q
Suppress normal progress and status messages.
This option has no effect at this time.

.TP
.RB - v
Print additional information on stdout.
Specifically, this option prints incoming and outgoing frames in hexadecimal format on stdout.
Output can be directed to a text file for analysis.

.TP
-\fB?\fR, --\fBhelp\fR
Print program help summary on stdout.
This option takes precedence over other options on the command line.

.TP
-\fB!\fR, --\fBversion\fR
Print program version information on stdout.
This option takes precedence over other options on the command line.
Use this option when sending screen dumps to Atheros Technical Support so that they know exactly which version of the Linux Toolkit you are using.

.SH ARGUMENTS

.TP
.IR 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 \fBlocal\fR.
See \fBDEVICES\fR for information about symbolic device addresses.

.SH DEVICES
Powerline devices use Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) addresses.
MAC addresses are 12 hexadecimal digits (\fB0123456789ABCDEFabcdef\fR) in upper, lower or mixed case.
Individual octets may be separated by colons, for clarity, but not all octets need to be seperated.
For example, "00b052000001", "00:b0:52:00:00:01" and "00b052:000001" are valid and equivalent.

.PP
The following MAC addresses are special and may be expressed by name instead of number.

.TP
.BR all
Equivalent to "broadcast", described next.

.TP
.BR broadcast
A synonym for the standard Ethernet broadcast address, \fBFF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF\fR.
All devices, whether local, remote or foreign will respond to this address.

.TP
.BR local
A synonym for the Qualcomm Atheros vendor specific Local Management Address (LMA), \fB00:B0:52:00:00:01\fR.
All local Atheros devices will recognize this address but remote and foreign devices will 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.

.SH DISCLAIMER
Atheros HomePlug AV Vendor Specific Management Message Entry 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.

.SH EXAMPLES
The following example sends the Ethernet frame defined in file \fBabc.hex\fR to powerline device \fB00:B0:52:BA:BE:01\fR.
The device will echo the frame about once per second for \fB5\fR seconds.

.PP
   # plcecho -f abc.hex -d 5 00:B0:52:BA:BE:01

.SH SEE ALSO
.BR efsu ( 1 )

.SH CREDITS
 Charles Maier <cmaier@qca.qualcomm.com>