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From: Archie Cobbs <archie@whistle.com>
Message-Id: <199607190155.SAA20190@bubba.whistle.com>
Subject: Re: interfaces, routes, etc.
To: dennis@etinc.com (Dennis)
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 18:55:09 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
In-Reply-To: <199607162305.TAA22595@etinc.com> from "Dennis" at Jul 16, 96 07:05:13 pm
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> On a different note..
> 
> Is there anyone working on or thinking about being able to point
> routes at an interface rather than an address? i.e.
> 
> route add 211.17.12.1 -interface ed0
> 
> or something similar? With aliasing and all this talk of NMBA its
> going to be a larger and larger issue. You can do this in LINUX and
> it makes life easier and is much more readable as well. Its particularly
> useful for setting up routing when interfaces don't yet have addresses
> (ie they are learning them via RARP, or INVARP).
> 
> Dennis
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Emerging Technologies, Inc.      http://www.etinc.com

I have wondered this myself. Especially for a point-to-point link,
there's no reason (except the arcane FreeBSD routing code) why you
shouldn't be able to say "if it's going to XYZ, send it out THAT
interface", letting the link layer handle the link layer addressing.

It wouldn't be hard to modify "route" to accept either type of
argument... the question is, does the kernel store interface
routes using the actual address or using a pointer to the interface?

-Archie

___________________________________________________________________________
Archie L. Cobbs, archie@whistle.com  *  Whistle Communications Corporation