Routing

I wondered that too. With a 32 bit mask will it always think that everything is on the local LAN and therefore never try to route off-box? Or am I just going bonkers?

waynocook, Not to ignore your legitimate question but I'm wondering how they were able to set a subnet mask of /32. WinXP refuses it. May I ask what OS is the host running?. The only 2 cases where I've seen a /32 mask in action, is for PPP connection from ISPs and when using a loopback interface on a router.

Any way, I'm guessing as far as I know, in theory, if the mask is /32 the host should think that all other IPs are out of it's LAN hence it should try to forward packets to the gateway. Now since there is no gateway (i.e no default route in the routing table of the host), the packet should be dropped. This means the host will not be able to even talk to it's own LAN, leave alone talking to other LANs

Now if you manage to place a static/default route in the host's routing table, and make it point to the gateway, this (in theory) should work for connecting the host to other LANs. However, I doubt that this is possible, I tried to add such a route on WinXP and it refuses because the destination IP (of the gateway) would seem like it's on a different LAN because of the /32 mask on the NIC.

I wondered that too. With a 32 bit mask will it always think that everything is on the local LAN and therefore never try to route off-box? Or am I just going bonkers?

Wouldn't it be the other way around and think its on a different subnet ? it would think all 4 octects are the NetworkID doing the AND operation on the two IP Addresses going off the Subnet and that would indicate a different NetworkID every time ?

Or am i going bonkers, lol