oberman@ptavv.llnl.gov (11/27/90)
In article <1990Nov26.194015.8938@inel.gov>, jfp@INEL.GOV (Jeff Pack) writes: > > As far as the legalities are concerned, the RFC's are a permissive > standard. For example, most other vendors agree that broadcast is > all ones in the octet (i.e.; 255) but Sun configures their default > broadcast to be all zeros. They say it depends how you interpret the RFC. > I think something similar is happening with subnet zero.... I'm not sure how Sun could get this idea. Sounds like EVERYONE who is responsible for configuring network systems needs to read the Host Requirements RFCs (1122 and 1123). They leave no doubt on the use of all zero broadcast! No interpretation required. See sections 3.2.1.3 and 3.3.6. These make it clear that hosts MUST use all ones broadcasts and SHOULD recognize all zeros broadcasts. Not too much to quibble over on this issue. It also states in 3.2.1.3 that: IP addresses are not permitted to have the value 0 or -1 for any of the <Host-number>, <Network-number>, or <Subnet- number> fields (except in the special cases listed above). I don't see much ambiguity here either. cisco follows the general rule of being generous in what they allow. But I would stick to the letter of the law. Not doing so is likely to buy you lots of headaches down the road. R. Kevin Oberman Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Internet: oberman@icdc.llnl.gov (415) 422-6955 Disclaimer: Don't take this too seriously. I just like to improve my typing and probably don't really know anything useful about anything.