*BSD News Article 61942


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From: taxfree@primenet.com (Henry Stapp)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Help using default gateway outside subnet
Date: 22 Feb 1996 09:44:02 -0700
Organization: NetLinx Internet Design Studios
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Message-ID: <taxfree.15.000FA271@primenet.com>
X-Posted-By: ip055.lax.primenet.com
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Hi All,

Interesting problem here. Our server is co-located with an ISP who has 
provided small subnets for their clients to use. (ie 205.147.0.* for the 
ISP's machines, and 205.147.1-15.* for colocated machines and ISDN/T1 
connections to customer's private office subnets)

Our server is 205.147.5.82 and the netmask is 255.255.255.240. 
The router, which is on the same physical wire as the server, has the address 
205.147.0.1. The problem is that when you specify the .0.1 address as the 
default gateway you get a "network unreachable" error.  

The usual solution, according to the ISP, is to manually add the default route 
_something_ like this...

route add default 205.147.0.1 metric 0

Although this works fine on Solaris and Linux it fails on both BSDI and 
FreeBSD. 

A call to BSDI tech support was greeted with a real bad attitude
"our system works the way it's supposed to! your ISP is a fool! WE CANT HELP 
YOU!"       hrmph! so much for them :(

Our temporary solution was to open up the netmask to encompass all subnets 
from .0 to .5, then manually add routes as necessary to the non-local subnets 
from .1 to .4 

This will eventually lead to problems down the road if we get moved to a much 
higher subnet number, or if we open up multiple routes to the net...

Has anyone got a better solution than opening up the subnet mask or switching 
OS's?

Thanks in advance,

Henry