On Tue, Dec 06, 2011 at 01:41:38PM +0200, Tapio Haapala wrote:
Hello,
Bird supports with ospf type broadcast. Looks that it actually means hat you execpt from "type mcast".
Name 'broadcast' for multicast-based interface is from OSPF RFC. So it is probably expected by others.
On several networks multicast is broken. Yes it is broken and we cannot do nothing for that because they are metro ethernet and odsl (operator dsl) networks and they are leased from local operators. One solution is make mtmp configuration but if you have 100 router it is nightmare.
In your case you probably could try NBMA, although needs more configuration than broadcast, it is much simpler (and more similar to broadcast) than PTMP. Advantage is that for a new router, you just have to configure it to a few (2-3) 'designated' routers responsible for distributing signalling information on that network. PTMP is more for a networks where isn't full visibility (i.e. A can speak with B, B with C, but A cannot directly speak with C). Not sure which networks has this property (perhaps some old leased-circuit based networks or ad-hoc wireless networks). BTW, how IPv6 is supposed to work on that broken network? There are no broadcasts in IPv6.
So I humbly asking new feature. It is real broadcast type. Because of compatibility reasons it is unpossible use type bcast for that and rename multicast for type mcast I suggest that new type is rbcast. It is extension over rfc but it is really usefull one. On real broadcast packets send to 255.255.255.255 so they does not get meshed up with multicast specific rules.
Interesting idea, i will probably implement that. -- Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo Ondrej 'SanTiago' Zajicek (email: santiago@crfreenet.org) OpenPGP encrypted e-mails preferred (KeyID 0x11DEADC3, wwwkeys.pgp.net) "To err is human -- to blame it on a computer is even more so."