>>>>> "David" == David Brownlee <abs@anim.dreamworks.com> writes:

    David> 	Its frequently just easier to reboot the machine to
    David> ensure everything is working OK.  I think as people gain
    David> experience they tend to try to avoid it :)

This makes some sense. I do think it might be worth our collective
whiles to make the task of bringing the network up and down
simpler. If there's a netstart script, a netstop script seems a
logical extension. 

It's nice to be able to change all sorts of system settings without
rebooting. It's one of the nicer things about using NetBSD instead of
Windows or MacOS. A first-time user who sets up her NetBSD box and
encounters instructions like--

    5.The final step is to reboot your machine to allow the changes to
    take effect.

    (from the very useful document:
    http://www2.giganet.net/~mark/NetBSD/howtos/net-howto.html#sec2)

--might not find out for a long time that this step was unnecessary.

It's certainly not a very big issue though.

-Zach Fine
czyz@u.washington.edu