Joel Wilsson <joelw@unix.se> writes:

> > IP address:    a.b.c.102
> > netmask:        255.255.255.224
> > gateway:        a.b.c.86
> 
> This shouldn't work.
> 
> > parameters work with Windows very well! Why?
> 
> If so, I'd say that's a bug.

Those parameteres do work with various flavors of Windows; I've worked
in offices where the DHCP server was telling clients that their
network was a /21, with the gateway and client addresses in
*different* (though adjacent) /21s. This didn't work so well with
NetBSD (or with Mac OS, as it happens), but since I was the only
non-Windows user there, nobody had noticed that the DHCP server's
config was wrong and it should be reporting a /20.

I don't know if this is an accidental failure to check that a gateway
is on the local net, or a deliberate decision in the code to "what the
hell, try it anyway, there's nothing else to do".

        - Nathan