Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sdcsvax!ucbvax!UC.MSC.UMN.EDU!slevy
From: slevy@UC.MSC.UMN.EDU (Stuart Levy)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  Happy New Year and * h e l p *
Message-ID: <8801101820.AA08067@uc.msc.umn.edu>
Date: 10 Jan 88 18:20:20 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 13

> By default, Sun does not initialize the netmask with ifconfig
> 	e.g. ifconfig le0 `hostname` netmask 255.255.255.0
> 
> This needs to be done on the server only, since a 3.3 or 3.4 SunOS
> diskless node will make a ICMP netmask request.

Be aware that there may be a bootstrapping problem with this.
The ICMP netmask request is broadcast, not sent only to the server,
and SUNs (3.3 at least) take the first reply received.
So if there are subnet-capable machines that haven't got the word yet,
they might propagate wrong broadcast masks.  If you wire the netmask
into the server, and then either take other hosts down or feed them
the right mask, just once, everything should work after that :->.