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Date:      Wed, 11 Feb 2015 09:40:39 -0500
From:      Eric van Gyzen <eric@vangyzen.net>
To:        Julian Elischer <julian@freebsd.org>,  Matt Churchyard <matt.churchyard@userve.net>, "freebsd-net@freebsd.org" <freebsd-net@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Invalid subnet masks
Message-ID:  <54DB69E7.60602@vangyzen.net>
In-Reply-To: <54DB343E.7090008@freebsd.org>
References:  <7e069c1946454793b1c7e0be988877c4@SERVER.ad.usd-group.com> <DE405399-70FE-48A3-B550-992EDEB5C468@netapp.com> <ecc9027578ce45d7a0436e345aadc249@SERVER.ad.usd-group.com> <54DB343E.7090008@freebsd.org>

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On 02/11/2015 05:51, Julian Elischer wrote:
> On 2/11/15 5:55 PM, Matt Churchyard wrote:
>
>>
>> Are there actually valid use cases for these types of network?
> yes.
> I've had networks that were the first and last quarter of a /24, and
> the middle two quarters were separate nets.
>
> Sure, it made my skin crawl, but I was in a pinch to get more machines
> onto that /26.
> all four were served by the same router so only one router needed to
> know..
>
> I have however at times though we could think about making ifconfig at
> give a warning.
> (but not an error).
>
>> I'm learning towards the opinion that they should be rejected unless
>> the user specifically overrides it (with something like an ifconfig
>> flag or sysctl).

These valid use cases are so rare, I would favor making this an error in
ifconfig, but also providing a flag to silence the message and accept
the mask.  The error message could even mention the name of the flag, to
be helpful.  For example:

# ifconfig igb0 netmask 250.250.250.0
ifconfig: netmask should be contiguous and left-justified; specify
"incontiguous" to override
# ifconfig igb0 incontiguous netmask 250.250.250.0
#

If it's just a warning, that warning will get very annoying to people
who are forced to use such a mask.  (They're already forced to use such
a network!)

Eric




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