On Thursday, November 29, 2001, at 05:01 , Ahsan Ali wrote:
>> For TCP, that is what is always used by default when creating an >> outbound connection. For incoming connections, the machine will of >> course reply using the IP address the connection came in on. And a >> program can always request to use a specific address if it wants to. >> >> I am not sure where you see a problem. > > What I am saying is that if you have (for instance) 192.168.0.0/24 as a > network. > > Interface A has the IP 192.168.0.10 with a netmask of 255.255.255.0 > (/24) > Alias A:1 has the IP 192.168.0.11 with a netmask of 255.255.255.255 > (/32) > > Now Host B (192.168.0.20 mask 255.255.255.0) tries to access Alias A:1 > which > is 192.168.0.11/32 so B sends to A:1 which it (correctly) assumes to be > on > its own network, Alias A:1 cannot however reach B without sending the > data > to its configured gateway. If routing is enabled on this host then it > may be > able to send the reply routed through Interface A only... I think you are confusing interfaces and addresses. In your case, B will want to send to ...11 (it doesn't see the mask that's installed on A), so it will ARP for it, and A will reply. B then sends the packet to A's MAC address (which is the same for both the original and the aliased address). When A replies to B, it will send to B through the same physical interface through which B's packet arrived. There's no issue with reachability: both systems, and all three addresses, are on the same link. The netmask tom-foolery is just a local-to-the-system-installing-the-alias trick; it has nothing to do with the on-the-wire behavior, or how the remote site sees the site installing the alias. With a /32 mask, the system can keep track of the various addresses without a lot of routing tricks which would otherwise be necessary (more work for the admin to install and remove aliases). It is confusing, but it has to do with the way the routing infrastructure works on *BSD systems, not with the way networking works in general. Regards, Justin --- Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon-At-Large * Institute for General Semantics | It's not whether you win or lose... | It's whether *I* win or lose. *--------------------------------------*-------------------------------* To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message