Hi again. One of the two problems/questions of my last mail have been resolved. Changing the "rip" configuration of bird to: ---[cut]--- protocol rip { authentication none; [...] interface "eth0" { mode multicast; }; interface "tun*" { mode multicast; }; [...] } ---[cut]--- worked fine. Now bird exchanges routes with the other hosts by multicasting mode, even over the ptp-links. So someone should change that example in the Bird Users Guide on page 6 (Chapter 3.1: Introduction). It says: "Here is an example of a simple config file. ... and runs RIP on all network interfaces found". But the "protocol rip" section does not list a "interfaces "*";" line, which I suppose to be the reason for part of my troubles related to that multicast thing described in my last mail. So the only remaining problem I encountered is that bird sends its routing tables every 5-10 seconds instead of every 30 seconds as it was told. One think that makes me wonder is that the "massive routing table broadcast" happens to eth0 only, not to the also existing ptp-link interface tun1... the broadcast to tun1 is done every 30 seconds as it is supposed to. Ah, yes, and one thing that I think of being a bit misleading is the message "Broadcasting routing table to eth0" (enabled by using "debug all", even if multicast is used for communication. Now I know that it is describing the action itself and not the method that is used to perform the action, but... :) Bye, Mike -- ------------------------------------ CompuLAN Europe GmbH Development - Wireless Solutions ------------------------------------