RE: Default Gateways

Munil Shah <munils@microsoft.com> Thu, 29 February 1996 00:36 UTC

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From: Munil Shah <munils@microsoft.com>
To: "dhcp-v4@bucknell.edu" <dhcp-v4@bucknell.edu>, "'bclark@ccmailpc.ctron.com'" <bclark@ccmailpc.ctron.com>
Cc: Pradeep Bahl <pradeepb@microsoft.com>
Subject: RE: Default Gateways
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:02:09 -0800
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I dont think it is specified anywhere in the RFCs, how to support the
kind
of DHCP server behaviour you need below. Microsoft's DHCP server does
support default gateway option as described in RFCs.

As I suggested earlier, you can do something like this for reserved ip
addresses. But for automatic addresses, it will require some special
intelligence(code) on the DHCP server side to give out the default
gateway 
address same as client's IP address. 

Are you suggesting that there are other(non-microsoft) dhcp servers that
support this?

Thanks,
-Munil

>----------
>From: 	bclark@ccmailpc.ctron.com[SMTP:bclark@ccmailpc.ctron.com]
>Sent: 	Wednesday, February 28, 1996 7:59 AM
>To: 	Munil Shah; dhcp-v4@bucknell.edu
>Cc: 	Pradeep Bahl
>Subject: 	Re: Default Gateways
>
>
>     We sell a large number of our switching products and many of our 
>     customers are seeing that switching is allowing them to remove
>routing 
>     from their networks. This, in effect, flattens the network to one 
>     large network. 
>     
>     While routing does a good job for keeping traffic localized,
>routers 
>     in general are a bottleneck for networks that regularly 
>     intercommunicate with each other. Switches eliminate this
>bottleneck 
>     because they provide traffic management without creating a
>bottleneck. 
>     
>     Without getting into the cons and pros of routers and switches, we
>
>     have several very large customers with thousands of host
>computers. 
>     They have gone with a switch environment and are removing their 
>     routers from their network. 
>     
>     Since the routers have been removed from the network, it is up to
>the 
>     host to perform its own gateway functions. Class a and class b
>subnets 
>     are not so much an issue as class c subnets are.
>     
>     Many of our customers use an intermix of class c subnet structures
>to 
>     help manage their workgroups. With only 255 host available in each
>
>     class c subnet, multiple subnets are obviously needed. Because the
>
>     network is flat they need to have every DHCP client use itself as
>a 
>     default gateway so that they can talk to other clients. 
>     
>     In summary, we have customers using flat networks, different
>subnets, 
>     no routers, and are experiencing communication problems because
>DHCP 
>     (under NT) doesn't support default gateways. 
>     
>     Regards,
>     Bret Clark
>     Product Management
>     Cabletron Systems
>