Petty@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA (11/06/87)
Hello I am new to the network. If this topic has already been addressed, I aplologize in advance. I am curious if anyone has thought about using ARP over an FDDI network? It seems like a match made in UCBerkeley. The problem as I see it, is that FDDI can have either 16 or 48 bit addresses. If the gurus of FDDI who hand out the numbers would ensure that the first 32 bits of a 48 bit hardware address were non-zero, then life would be good. Thanks in advance. Jim Petty Spartacus Inc.
ddp+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Drew Daniel Perkins) (11/13/87)
What's the problem with 16 or 48 bit addresses? All 802.x networks are like this. However, it is clearly specified that you can't have a particular network with both sizes in use at the same time. I'll bet FDDI is the same, though I don't have a spec in hand. In either case, the hardware length field in the ARP packet should be used to specify the size. Drew
jas@MONK.PROTEON.COM.UUCP (11/13/87)
Nope, FDDI is more clever. You can mix address sizes on the same ring. Why do architects of next-generation network whatevers keep insisting on variable-size everything?