[Spread-users] Spread on point-to-point links

[Dave Parker]

> 2) (I'll have an answer for this myself very shortly, but...) How will
> spread deal with binding to a point-to-point interface (i.e. netmask
> 255.255.255.255)?

I may have answered my own question here - here's what I did:

I have two nodes connected via a PLIP link (which is by definition
ptp).  These look like this:

plip0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr FC:FC:3F:79:88:FD
          inet addr:A.B.C.Y  P-t-P:A.B.C.Z  Mask:255.255.255.255
          UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1098 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1072 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:10
          Interrupt:7 Base address:0x378

The problems are:

1) The PLIP driver with the kernel I'm using has a problem with UDP
broadcasts (as in won't do 'em)
2) I'm not even sure what a broadcast would look like on a network like
this.

My solution was to set up each node as a segment:

Spread_Segment A.B.C.Y:4803 {
        sat-ha1               A.B.C.Y  {
           D A.B.C.Y
           C A.B.C.Y
        }
}
Spread_Segment A.B.C.Z:4803 {
        sat-ha2               A.B.C.Z  {
           D A.B.C.Z
           C A.B.C.Z
        }
}
Spread_Segment  127.0.0.255:4803 {
        localhost               127.0.0.1  {
           D 127.0.0.1
           C 127.0.0.1
        }
}

If I understand spread correctly, this means that I'll incurr some
overhead as spread will assume it needs to use the hop protocol to get
between the two nodes (?).

Anyway, this appears to be working, though if anyone has a better idea
I'd sure enjoy hearing it.