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From: medin@NSIPO.NASA.GOV ("Milo S. Medin", NASA ARC NSI Project Office)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Subnetting a very large population
Message-ID: <9106211648.AA25400@cincsac.arc.nasa.gov>
Date: 21 Jun 91 16:48:36 GMT
References: <98is41w163w@sadss>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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Gareth, if you run OSPF and the router implements variable length subnet
support properly, subnets of a subnetted network do not need to
be connected.  We do this at NASA.  It does work.  It should work with
any vendor who implements according to the spec.  We sort of stumbled into
this by accident when configuring some routers, but since then, we've found
it very useful.  It shouldn't be used as a way to kludge around a bad design,
but there are many cases where it's useful.

I suggest you ask the router vendors you are taking bids from for this
support.  I expect most of them will tell you they can now support
this configuration.

						Thanks,
						   Milo