>> For the broadcast address, it's different, since you might also use >> it in programming (i.e. when sending broadcasts). > > So there is no need to look up the broadcast address in the > configuration? Don't you have to look up the rest of the network > configuration too? (Or otherwise how do you know your network address > and the value of /N?)
You would have to know either the broadcast address directly, or the network (i.e. address and prefix length). >>> What is actually configured on a particular host to be the broadcast >>> address is a separate issue, even if *by convention* in most cases it >>> is given by one of the above functions -- the network object doesn't >>> care, the configuration object is something else (and outside the >>> scope of this PEP). >> It's a little bit stronger than convention; there are RFCs saying >> that the all-ones (-1) address has to be the broadcast address. > > Sure, but what is the status of those RFCs? (Plenty of RFCs are > unimplemented or superseded by others etc.) The one that says that the broadcast address is -1 (and 0 should also be supported) is STD 3. The one that talks about 31-bit prefixes (RFC 3021) is a proposed standard. > RFC 3021 adds an odd wart to the "all ones" and "all zeros" functions > (or perhaps only to "all ones"?). To both: it allows them to be used as host addresses, even though STD 3 says that they are reserved and must not be assigned to hosts. > If after further examination of the > facts we find that it should be honored, then what do we do for > .network and .broadcast on a /32 "network"? For these, I would first like to find out what their specification is. Regards, Martin _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com