bjf@utcs.UUCP (Bruce Freeman) (11/09/84)
We have two ethernets connected by a point-to-point link that we try to have
look like one big network. For mail and most most other daemons this is not
a problem but good old rwho insists on talking only on networks that are
directly connected to the host. We would like to have the sites on one
ethernet show up in rwho/ruptime output on the other ethernet. I have made
a first pass through the code and it is not intuitivly obvious that this
is easy to do. There is a cryptic comment that the flags field of the neighbour
structure could maybe forward stuff but I don't immediately see how. Has
anyone munged rwho to solve this problem? Any ideas on what the best way
is to accomplish this task? Thanks for any ideas or pointers offered.
I would like to avoid having to read a list of sites to broadcast stuff at
when rwho starts up if possible but this is starting to look more likely. Sigh.
--
Bruce Freeman University of Toronto {decvax|ihnp4|utzoo}!utcs!bjfDoug Kingston <dpk@BRL-TGR> (11/14/84)
Mike Muuss (mike@brl-bmd) has already done what you want (all the specification of other hosts to the rwho database, by default it only includes those on your directly connected broadcast networks). I will try and send the appropriate diffs to net.sources or net.bugs. -Doug-
srradia@watmath.UUCP (sanjay Radia) (11/15/84)
The rwhod does a broadcast of the uptime and who-list on all the
networks directly connected to the host. Now, gateway hosts (hosts
connected to 2 or more network) forward packets destined for other networks
if the appropriate information is in the kernel routing tables. They do
not forward broadcast packets as this could cause loops and besides, in
my opinion, the ethernet broadcast packets, by definition, are destined to
all hosts on a network and not to all hosts on an internet.
I know that some work was done at Xerox on internetwork broadcasting
(by Boggs, I think).
You might make the rhwod do the necessary "broadcast forwarding" if its
host is connected to multiple networks but again you have to watch out
for loops (hop counts will not work properly in general depending
upon the topology of your internet). You could add on the network id of each
net through which a packet passes and then somehow prevent loops.
Alternately, you could explictly tell certain rwhod's (those at key
nodes on the network) to forward info to other networks. This solution would
require manual intervention each time there is a change in the network topology
and maybe it won't work for certain topologies.
Maybe someone has better ideas.
sanjay
--
sanjay
UUCP: ...!{ utzoo,decvax,ihnp4,allegra}!watmath!srradia
ARPA: srradia%watmath%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
CSNET: srradia%watmath@waterloo.CSNETkissell@flairvax.UUCP (Kevin Kissell) (11/17/84)
If memory serves, the Xerox internet broadcast was implemented by sending
packets to the broadcast address on particular subnets. A seperate packet
had to be sent to each subnet.
Kevin D. Kissell
Fairchild Research Center
Advanced Processor Development
uucp: {ihnp4 decvax}!decwrl!\
>flairvax!kissell
{ucbvax sdcrdcf}!hplabs!/