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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ucbvax!MOJAVE.STANFORD.EDU!satz
From: satz@MOJAVE.STANFORD.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Black holes for 4.3BSD
Message-ID: <8701280607.AA11550@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Wed, 28-Jan-87 00:52:22 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8701280607.AA11550
Posted: Wed Jan 28 00:52:22 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Jan-87 03:42:28 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 12
Approved: tcp-ip@sri-nic.arpa

A simple solution for avoiding black holes is to keep hard coded
routes out of your routing tables. The major problem is suppling the
default route since connections fail without one.  Since your gateways
support Proxy Arp, they will provide a hardware address to send the IP
packet. The gateway could then send you an ICMP Redirect if necessary.

As a test, on my uVax running 4.3, I added a default route back to my
own interface (with metric 0) and removed the default route that
pointed to the gateway. I was able to access hosts on the rest of the
campus (other subnets) and through our ARPA gateway (other nets).

Sorry if this offends anyone's sense of aesthestics.