Re: ifconfig v2

[John Hawkinson <jhawk%MIT.EDU@localhost>]

I'm not really a fan of these improvements ("Why does NetBSD have
to change an interface that I use on other platforms? It's just
going to be annoyingly different, even if it is somehow objectively
better"), but one specific suggestion:

> Finally, I get more use out of mask lengths than netmasks, and rarely is
> the broadcast address useful to me:
> 
> wm0: flags < up, running >
>         address: 00:26:2d:f3:c8:c7
>         media: Ethernet none (none)
>         inet 169.254.162.222 prefixlen 16
>         inet6 fe80::226:2dff:fef3:c8c7%wm0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1

If you want to do that, please use

   inet 169.253.162.222/16

which is more standard notation (so-called "CIDR" notation) for IPv4.

Also, my recent experience is that while rarely is the broadcast
address useful, when it's wrong, you are not likely to query specifically
for it, and removing it means you're less likely to notice the
problem. So I would leave it in.

--jhawk%mit.edu@localhost
  John Hawkinson