gwr@mc.com (Gordon W. Ross) writes:

>>   An interface that is assigned IP address 0.0.0.0 receives all
>>   packets that the underlying h/w interface receives, i.e. those
>>   with the matching h/w address or the h/w broadcast address.
>> 
>> Can anyone see a problem with the above proposal?
>> Attached is a proposed change to implement this.
>> Comments?

I can think of two preferable solutions.  One would be to add an
interface flag which specifically requests this behavior.  This way,
you don't get it by accident.

The other is a little more complex, but not much, and has other uses.
Mycroft and I discussed (months ago in person) adding support for up
addresses which were not just addresses, but address/length tuples.
So, you could make lo0 127/8, or if you were doing web server
aliasing, you could make one of your interfaces 192.x.y.z/26 to give
yourself 64 addresses without needing to specify all of them
individually.  As a side benefit, a mask and compare is more
efficient, uses less state, etc. than 64 compares.  A "normal" address
would just have /32 implied.  If you implement these semantics, then
you could make an interface's address 0/0, and get exactly the
behavior you want.

Of course, if you only implement the flag, I won't be surprised :-)

		Marc