Tauno Voipio <tauno.voipio@iki.fi.nospam.invalid> wrote:

> I just wonder if the target address is the broadcast address
> to get rid of ARP associated with a normal local network packet
> transfer. The trick has a strong scent of a dirty hack. A
> standard-compliant stack should not accept it.

Agreed, on both counts.

> Is the Ethernet connection a point-to-point connection
> without any other hosts in the same segment?

My ethernet card is not connected to any host. I did have another host
connected with a cross-over cable but it died and hasn't been replaced.

That might be the reason for the "SIOCADDRT: Network is unreachable"
in this case - I just don't know enough to say yea or nay. While I
seem to still be able to configure network-gateway routing for most any
ordinary network and gateway address without another host, "limited
broadcast" may be different.

> Maybe the correct solution is a new driver a la PPPoE using
> raw sockets to transfer the data.

That's way out of my league. I just supposed that something like PPPoE
(PPP over Wireless?) was being used.

As far as a hack to pppd goes I can only speculate wildly. It might be
possible to intercept the 255.255.255.255 in the part of pppd/auth.c
with the IN_BADCLASS(addr) test and substitute a non-local private IP
address so that pppd believes the IPCP negotiations are successful and
will use that IP address as the remote's. I have no clue as to whether
such a hack would work.

But for my POTS PPP link I can (optionally) specify a private IP address
for the remote IP address, it is cheerfully accepted by the ISP host,
the PPP interface is brought up with that remote IP address, and the
link is viable.

-- Clifford Kite Email: "echo xvgr_yvahk-ccc@ri1.arg|rot13"
PPP-Q&A links, downloads: http://ckite.no-ip.net/
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