On Tue, Feb 18, 2003 at 12:20:12PM -0800, netbsd99@sudog.com wrote:
> On Friday 14 February 2003 09:48, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> >
> > That may not work either.  What's going on here is that the network
> > configuration is inherently illegal, because the "default gateway"
> > you're being fed isn't on any network they've allocated you an
> > address on.
> 
> Whether the network configuration is illegal or not, would it be beneficial to 
> allow this kind of routing? Perhaps "Linux does it" isn't an argument, but 
> perhaps in the interests of interoperability, considering it might be a good 
> idea.

It's entirely possible to arrange your routing this way if you want to
badly enough; in the same message that you quoted _part of_, I explained
one method of doing so.

I can't imagine how it would make any sense to screw up all of our routing
table data structures to make it easier to do this sort of thing when:

A) It's already possible to do it if you _must_
B) The "technology" that "requires" it is in its death throes (phone-return
   cable modems/sat modems)
C) That technology doesn't even really require it anyway; the problem is an
   artifact of misconfiguration of the head-end hardware in the first place.
D) This sort of routing arrangement violates all of the fundamental Internet
   Standards _and_ plain, ordinary common sense.

Thor