4.1c Ether Addressing Problem

[rbk at sequel.UUCP]

The manual pages for 4.1c ethernet drivers specify that they fill in
the 48-bit destination field in the packet with their *own* high-order
3-bytes, and 3-bytes of (low-order) destination address.  The sources
are consistent with this.  This seems to imply that all the ethernet
boards in your collection of systems must come from the same
manufacturer, unless you have gateway(s).  This is an undesireable
restriction.

Is this an accurate description of the problem?  It seems that the inet
code uses "struct sockaddr_in" to indicate addresses, and this contains
a "struct in_addr" which uses a single (unsigned) long to store the
address.  There are comments that suggest this is "old style" inter-net
addresses.

Hence the questions:  is this problem going to be fixed in 4.2?  If
not, does anyone have ideas on how to fix it?  My fear is that changes
might propogate throughout the TCP/IP code, due to the unusual size of
the necessary addresses.


-- 
	Bob Beck
	Sequel Computer Systems
	...ogcvax!sequel!rbk
	(503)627-9809