Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rutgers!bellcore-2!envy!karn
From: karn@envy..bellcore.com (Phil Karn)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: ka9q route command
Keywords: ka9q, route, /bits
Message-ID: <1990Sep5.015557.7359@bellcore-2.bellcore.com>
Date: 5 Sep 90 01:55:57 GMT
References: <9@eng.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@bellcore-2.bellcore.com (Poster of News)
Reply-To: karn@envy.bellcore.com (Phil Karn)
Distribution: na
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Inc
Lines: 30

In article <9@eng.UUCP> fff@eng.UUCP (Fred Fierling) writes:
>Everything works really well except for this command:
>
> route add 195.75.11.0/24 sl0
>
>This causes one floppy access and then net goes off into never never land.
>
Fred,

Try
	route add [195.75.11.0]/24 sl0

It used to be that you had to enclose all numeric IP address args to
NET in brackets; otherwise a hostid string was taken as the domain
name of a host. I got so many complaints about this that I installed a
heuristic into the name lookup routine.

If the string isn't surrounded by brackets, the heuristic decides
whether it has a domain name or a numeric IP address by scanning the
token to see if it contains anything other than decimal digits and
periods. If not, it's assumed to be a domain name and is handed off to
the domain resolver. This works well for regular user commands, but
unfortunately the slash character fools the heuristic into thinking
your target is a domain name. If you don't have a domain resolver this
query can hang (the disk access occurs as the resolver checks the
local cache.)

I'm aware of this "gotcha" and I'll try to come up with a clean fix.

Phil