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Date:      Mon, 30 Oct 1995 18:11:48 -0500
From:      dennis@etinc.com (dennis)
To:        Julian Elischer <julian@ref.tfs.com>
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Unnumbered Interfaces
Message-ID:  <199510302311.SAA18575@etinc.com>

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>define un-numbered interfaces..

This seems to be the standard reply here...so here goes...

Most routers have an option (which everyone seems to like) that
allows a serial interface to be defined without a local address.
This allows all interfaces on the machine to have the same address,
almost always the primary ethernet address.  For Example...

ed0     Address: 192.1.1.1
ser0   PTP Address 211.14.17.1
ser1   PTP Address:215.27.1.1

When using unnumbered interfaces, all of the interfaces have a "local" address
of 192.1.1.1. This is nice because all transactions from the host have the same
source address, and you also save addresses by not having to use one for each
logical or physical connection. Another and perhaps better  method would be to 
have a host address for the machine, which would be applied as the source
address
for all unnumbered interfaces. It allows for the appearence of a single IP
entity to
the outside world, which of course is what a single host really is.

Given that unix really resolves to a pointer (internally) and the local
address is
only used for reference....I would think that it can be done. You'd have to
be able to 
configure a PTP interface without a local address...

ifconfig ser0 unnum 211.14.17.4

or something of the sort, and all or your routing entries for this location
would have
to point at 211.14.17.4  which they should anyway.

Of course things like gateD won't work with this....but in time it might.

Dennis

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Synchronous Communications Cards and Routers For
Discriminating Tastes. 56k to T1 and beyond. Frame
Relay, PPP, HDLC, and X.25




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