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: <8808251835.aa02671@Louie.UDEL.EDU>
Date: 25 Aug 88 23:35:32 GMT
References: <8808251404.aa18860@Louie.UDEL.EDU>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 38


Dave Crocker writes:

> Bob's suggestion of having a fake router which spoofs one sub-nets
> membership as part of another is clever 

Hmmm, let's not assume that a device that connects between two
different link-level methods has to be an internetwork router . . .

>                                         but, it seems to me, fraught
> with danger.  One of the simplest concerns is that every new type of
> mechanism that is added to the architecture of a network alters the
> complexity and, therefore, predictability, of the architecture.  For
> example, what does this scheme do to network security?  Does it really
> make the network simpler to manage? ...

This would indeed be a new mechanism in the PC/NetBIOS context, but
this scheme is in use by about 60 KIP gateways and over 400
Macintoshes (and some PCs on LocalTalk, too) at Stanford, and dozens
if not hundreds of similar installations nation- and world-wide.
Running a Kinetics box as an IP router is also possible; I believe KIP
is the choice of the vast majority of K-box owners.

I'll admit the idea could fail completely if the AppleTalk NBP
mechanisms that are used to locate the gateway, acquire and defend
addresses, etc, don't map well to NetBIOS (about which I know fairly
little).  Certainly it's hard to classify such a gateway as an
OSI-level-N relay, but NetBIOS as a link layer is a little iffy to
start with.

Ease of management is in fact the major benefit of the scheme.  With
the KIP scheme (including dynamic IP address assignment) _absolutely_
no_configuration_ is needed to add a new user station to an existing
net.  No Bootp tables, no RARP tables, no IP address assignment.  Of
course, your organizational IP address reservation method does need to
have a way to reserve a block of addresses for the gateway.  And, as
mentioned before, it's transparent to your IP routers as well.

 - RL "Bob"