Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ANDREW.CMU.EDU!ddp+
From: ddp+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Drew Daniel Perkins)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: a proposed modification to ARP
Message-ID: 
Date: 12 Jul 88 01:36:30 GMT
References: <88.07.10.1314.590@pescadero.stanford.edu>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 10

I'm not sure if you are really suggesting using 2^24 multicast addresses or
not.  While quite precise, it would probably be be overkill.  Considering that
many (most?) of the ethernet chips which support more than 1 multicast address
actually support 64, a good compromise between only 1 address and 2^24
addresses might be to reserve 64.  Some sort of fast hashing function could be
used to map an IP address to one of 64 buckets.  This probably rules out the
hashing function (CRC's) used by many of the chips themselves.  How hard is it
to get lots of multicast addresses?  Is it possible to buy 2^24 addresses?

Drew