jas@MONK.PROTEON.COM (John A. Shriver) (12/23/87)
You can't do that. A network must be contiguous. This is stated on RFC1009 page 5: "The distinction between subnets of such a subnetted network must not be visible outside that network". Since that gateway is not part of the partitioned subnetted network, how in the dickens would it know which half of the network to send a given packet to? It would not have the subnet routing table. Gateways outside a subnetted network send a packet to the nearest point on that network. Then subnet routing carries the packet to the right subnet. While this may take more hops than is optimal, the benefits of abstraction make it worthwhile. Exactly the same restriction applies to DECnet. A DECnet area must be contiguous. It also has the same extra-hop phenomenon in inter-area routing.