two interfaces one subnet

Curtis Maurand cmaurand at xyonet.com
Tue May 12 17:37:03 UTC 2009


Try this:

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Bridge

--Curtis

Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
> On May 11, 2009, at 5:40 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
>> On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Hector Herrera 
>> <hectorherrera at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 2:22 PM, David Devereaux-Weber
>>> <ddevereauxweber at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> ... both> interfaces are on the same subnet, the OS sees the same 
>>>> router (gateway)
>>>> address on both interfaces, and the results are sub-optimal ... 
>>>> around 50%
>>>> packet loss.
>>>
>>> packet loss is probably due to the network switch having to re-learn
>>> the location of the MAC address constantly as it sees packets on two
>>> or more ports with the same MAC address (think STP loops).
>>
>>  My understand of the scenario is: Two physical interfaces, each with
>> a unique IP address, in the same Ethernet broadcast domain, on the
>> same IP (sub)network.
>>
>>  If that's the case, the MAC address won't change.  The cards stay
>> put.  So a layer two switch will be none the wiser.
>>
>>  The reason this doesn't work (for most implementations) is that most
>> IP routers look only at the destination IP address, and keep no state.
>> (Here, I'm using "router" to include the routing engine built-in to
>> any full IP implementation, not just dedicated equipment from Cisco,
>> et. al.)
>>
>>  So we have a host with IP addresses A and B on the same subnet.  A
>> packet comes in from some other host X.  The application software does
>> whatever it does, and sends a response.  The router looks at the
>> destination IP address X, and sees that it has two routes, A and B.
>>
>>  Depending on implementation, the router may send everything out the
>> first interface it finds in the routing table (e.g., use A and ignore
>> B), or round-robin between the two, or who-knows-what.  Either way, if
>> the packet *from* X was addressed *to* B but the response comes back
>> from *A*, then host X is going to drop the packet as
>> invalid/irrelevant/etc.
>
> You are assuming facts not in evidence.  It doesn't matter which 
> physical interface transmits the packet.  For instance, if I ping a 
> router's loopback interface, there is nothing stopping the router from 
> making the loopback the source IP address of the return packet even 
> though the (virtual) loopback interface _obviously_ did not physically 
> transmit the packet.
>
> Another example: Imagine a web server with two uplinks in _different_ 
> subnets running Quagga.  Now assume the web server gets an HTTP 
> request and the route back to the requesting host changes before all 
> the packets are returned.  Does the download break?  Sure, if you use 
> an implementation too broken for words.  If not, things work just fine.
>
> Could everyone please stop coming up with "if people are stupid and 
> break things, things don't work" examples.  We all agree on that.
>
> Back in reality land, things that broken tend not to be used.  (And 
> please no jokes about cisco or microsoft or whatever.)
>





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