[ On Thu, June 27, 1996 at 08:19:42 (-0700), Erik E. Fair wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: ifaliases 
>
> We even have the perfect example right in front of us: netbsd.org,
> whose www, sup, and ftp servers move around from time to time, but
> given some care in doing so, those of us who access the mailing lists,
> and other information services associated with NetBSD, don't have to
> know or care.

This is a bit off topic, esp. for tech-net, but I just wanted to mention
there's an Internet Draft under way to codify the best common practice
of these "service" names, and there's the DNS SRV draft, which is an
extended version of WKS RRs, and I've un-officially proposed that we
revive the WKS RR with an extension to the resolver library that'll
allow applications to find the appropriate server based on the port
number for the given protocol.  Of course any success of either WKS
revival or SRV may require software API changes or extensions, and for
at least one major application to make use of the feature.

> Anyway, this is not going away, and given that, I still think that a
> hostmask for the NetBSD network code is a good idea if we want to
> support a lot of IP addresses on the same interface efficiently.

Back to the topic at hand....  Yes, I support this 101%.  *All* of the
ISPs I work with who do multi-homed servers for customers use addresses
from the same network for the "virtual" interfaces, and if those
addresses are not sequential it is only by accident.  A "hostmask" would
work very well for them.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 443-1734			VE3TCP			robohack!woods
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets Of The Weird <woods@weird.com>