Why do Suns use 0's for the broadcast address?

Rob Liebschutz rob at rjl.com
Thu Aug 16 03:30:46 AEST 1990


The host requirements RFC (1122) states that the default broadcast address
should be 1's and not 0's.  Why does Sun distribute their software with a
default (directed) broadcast address of 0's?  Has this changed in SunOS
4.1?  Has anyone every brought this issue up with Sun?

I'm doing some networking work for a company which has a diverse mix of
Suns, Vaxen, PC's and other strange beasts that I won't dare to name, and
I'm having trouble convincing them that they should adopt an all ones
broadcast address.  Their basic arguement is that they want users to be
able to take their Suns out of the box and install them as easily as
possible, and if 1's are the correct broadcast address, why don't the Suns
come configured that way?

Rob



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