Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!JESSICA.STANFORD.EDU!morgan
From: morgan@JESSICA.STANFORD.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: Wollongong's PC router
Message-ID: <8808241513.aa02929@Louie.UDEL.EDU>
Date: 24 Aug 88 20:11:07 GMT
References: <8808241146.aa00303@Louie.UDEL.EDU>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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An additional issue with Wollongong's approach to connecting a NetBIOS
LAN to IP/Ethernet is that the router software does not support a
routing information exchange protocol (eg RIP), meaning lots of
unpleasantness with configuring static routes to drop it into a large
network.  The only thing worse, I suppose, would be router software
that *did* support RIP, which anyone could put up on any PC anywhere
anytime with any funny network numbers they felt like . . .

A better scheme, I think, would be the one used by KIP for the
Kinetics FastPath: the gateway manages a set of IP host addresses from
the address space of the Ethernet network to which it is attached, and
responds with its Ethernet address to ARPs within that set (I guess
it's just Proxy ARP, isn't it).  No muss with routing issues, the PC
clients run IP-over-NetBIOS as usual.  Having the gateway dynamically
assign IP addresses to the PC clients (ala KIP) would be even better,
but not necessary.  NetBIOS name discovery could handle the PCs
finding the gateway's link-level address (since it's not an IP router
any more).

- RL "Bob" Morgan
  Networking Systems
  Stanford