Are Tmobile using bogus DoD IP addresses (bogons)? I recently started picking up some weird entries in my firewall log:

kernel: arplookup 26.XXX.XXX.XXX failed: host is not on local network

There are at least at dozen entries, all to different IP's within DISANET26.

I couldn't help but be curious as to what was going on so I fired up Wireshark and began capturing packets to try and find out where it was coming from.

Turns out it's my brand new HTC sensation with all but a handful of apps installed (standard google apps + other apps I've used in the past) - I don't even have it rooted yet.

Wireshark shows a Broadcast ARP packet coming from the sensation's mac address, but logs it as coming from the DoD IP in question. The target is the gateway (pfsense router).

I've found a similar discussion over at the tmobile forums with no official tmobile response: http://forums.t-mobile.com/t5/Help-General-Discussion/Hiport-connects-to-DoD/td-p/205863

I doubt I'll find someone at tmobile who will have a clue what I'm talking about but whether the DoD is involved or not there's no denying that the phone is trying to send these packets to them. 

I won't sleep well until I know why.
Some large ISPs/cell providers have been known to be assigning reserved IP addresses (i.e. IP address that does not belong to the private addresses) to devices in their network. Many organizations (government and universities) that participated in the early days of the Internet owned very large blocks of IP address that aren't being used, and their IP addresses are suspect to this sort of misuse.

The reason they did this is usually because they run out of supply for private IP addresses. This workaround is violating all kinds of standards, but it is generally safe as long as nobody in their network need to access a server using those reserved IP addresses, and since these IP addresses are unused by their owner anyway, nobody really cared to do anything about it.

btw, my superintendant told me to told you to not worry about the men in black suits in front of your residence, they're gardeners.