On 08/26/2011 13:57, Adam Novak wrote: > On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 3:49 PM, Doug Barton <dougb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> I have a related-but-different example of how end nodes being able to >> know/discover direct paths to one another could be useful. Imagine a >> busy server network with some web servers over here, some sql servers >> over there, etc. All of these systems are on the same network, same >> switch fabric, and have the same gateway address. In an ideal world I >> would like them to be able to know that they can speak directly to one >> another without having to go through the gateway (and without my having >> to manually inject static routes on the hosts, which of course is both >> painful and un-scale'y. > > Shouldn't that be covered by the subnet mask? Mostly, yes of course, but I'm dramatically simplifying my example for dramatic effect. :) > As long as they know > they're on the same subnet (and ARP broadcasts will reach everyone) > they should just ARP for each other and not involve the router at all. > > If they are on different IP subnets, but the same Ethernet, Yes, this is more often the case that I'm dealing with. (Working on fixing a problem I inherited for a new client, so per your comment below "don't number that way" may be the right answer.) Doug > then we > can either come up with a new way to do routing, or tell people not to > number things that way. Perhaps a subnet mask or CIDR prefix is not > expressive enough? -- Nothin' ever doesn't change, but nothin' changes much. -- OK Go Breadth of IT experience, and depth of knowledge in the DNS. Yours for the right price. :) http://SupersetSolutions.com/ _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf