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Date:      Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:02:04 +0100
From:      "Bruce M. Simpson" <bms@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com>
Cc:        FreeBSD Net <freebsd-net@freebsd.org>, Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>, Kevin Oberman <oberman@es.net>
Subject:   Re: multiple routing tables review patch ready for simple testing.
Message-ID:  <4818B41C.3090500@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <4818B2B7.2070401@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <20080430172705.2E3275AD6@mail.bitblocks.com> <4818B2B7.2070401@FreeBSD.org>

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Bruce M. Simpson wrote:
>>
>> Wouldn't it make sense to treat each alias as on a separate
>> logical interface?  Then each logical interface belongs to
>> exactly one FIB.  On input you decide which logical inteface
>> a packet arrived on by looking at its destination MAC
>> address.  That reduces confusion quite a bit, at least in my
>> mind!  What does doing more than this buy you?
>>   
>
> It doesn't buy anything because there is still no 1:1 mapping -- the 
> link-layer destination address maps to an ifp, and multiple aliases 
> exist on the ifp.

Let me qualify that further: You are talking about splitting network 
layer addresses onto their own logical interfaces, with the goal of 
having a 1:1 mapping for FIB resolution.

This doesn't buy anything, because in IP, the previous hop never encodes 
the next-hop address it sends to -- it merely performs a lookup and 
forwards to you; your MAC address is the same for every IP address you 
have on the link, therefore it is not a unique identifier.

UNLESS you use a separate MAC address for every IP alias which you add, 
in which case, you are merely pushing the mapping elsewhere in the 
stack; it actually adds more complexity in this case.



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