Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!bionet!lear From: lear@NET.BIO.NET (Eliot Lear) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: Naive questions about subnets & domains Message-ID:Date: 16 Aug 89 16:04:47 GMT References: <1072@adobe.UUCP> Organization: Natl Computer Resource for Mol. Biology Lines: 37 This is more of a question than an answer, but you might find it interesting... It would seem to me that whether you stick your other sites in your class B depends on whether those remote sites will eventually have entry points to outside networks. Existing routing technology is pretty wretched about such things. Case and point: Suppose you have a network that consists of two or more locations, that looks something like the following: Site A T 1 Site B Highspeed Internet <---> Backup Link Link Well, what happens if the T1 goes down? If each site has a different net number, then with the blessing of appropriate routing gods, one might even route through the Internet to get around the break (forgetting policy issues, for the moment). If you use the same network, then Site A continues to advertise it as before, and the chances are that Site B will most likely be screwed, depending on what routing protocol is in use. My question: Does anyone see an answer to this problem, or have I defined the problem incorrectly? One way to handle such a break would be to transmit a subnet mask with the route. Yes, this would increase routing traffic, but one would only do such a thing when attempting to correct a situation like the one I described. -- Eliot Lear [lear@net.bio.net]