On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Chuck McManis wrote:

> What Does it Mean For BOOTPARAMS?
> 
> What it means is this, in the absence of any other data, the default
> netmask for an address 10.x.y.z is 0xff000000 (because it is a class A
> address). The default broadcast address is then 10.255.255.255. _However_
> if you set the netmask artificially (using ifconfig's netmask option for
> example) to be a "class C" netmask (ie 255.255.255.0) then the broadcast
> address on your class C network is 10.x.y.255.
> 
> Now the machine the is running bootparamd has gets a packet addressed to
> 10.255.255.255 and it is running with address 10.x.y.z and a netmask of
> 255.255.255.0. The server machine creates the broadcast address 10.x.y.255
> based on the netmask, compares 10.255.255.255 to that and to 10.x.y.z,
> since neither match it 
> NEVER SENDS THE PACKET UP THE STACK. And bootparamd sits there mute.

Then how come netbooting my VAXstations with bootparamd works fine for
me?  I've always setup my bootservers with 10.x.y.z/255.255.255.0 as my
bootserver IP/netmask pair.  I'm not saying that it *should* work in light
of your statements... but it does work.

-brian.
---
Brian "JARAI" Chase | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ | VAXZilla LIVES!!!