On Sun, Aug 10, 2003 at 05:52:45PM -0700, Bill Studenmund wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Aug 2003, David Young wrote:
> 
> > I tentatively agree with Itojun that you should use SIOCDLIFADDR and
> > SIOCALIFADDR, instead of SIOCSLIFADDR, in anticipation of link-level
> > aliases. I agree tentatively because I do not (yet) see why support for
> > link-level aliases is desirable.
> 
> So you can implement a virtual server that is backed by two real servers
> in a fail-over configuration. By having an alias for the MAC of the
> "server", when one box takes over for the other, no other devices on the
> net will need to update their arp tables (and possibly complain that
> the arp tables changed).

The correct way to do this sort of thing is with network-layer routing
updates, not with disgusting link-layer hackery.

Thor