> On Thu, Oct 31, 2002 at 10:09:54AM -0800, Juan Gomez wrote:
> >
> > Josh
> >
> > That is the purpose of my orignal message. In fact I have implemented
> > somthing along the lines of what you suggest below and I just want to test
> > the waters on whether this will be accepted. My current implementation is a
> > little more specific as it only gets the interfaces with IPv4 enabled on
> > them and skip lo but the idea is to get a consensus on what would be
> > genrally useful and then introduce that.
> >
> > Regards, Juan
>
> I personally think it's a very bad idea, because it will lead
> to confusion. You will define a concept of "the node IP address",
> which doesn't exist and is a very dangerous assumption.
> Just take VPN, which is becoming very widespread. You have two
> IP addresses, one on the interface, one on the tunnel. Which one do
> you get ? Those two IP address will have widely different behaviour
> and you can't exchange them.
> My fear is that people will start coding around this API and
> flawed concept, and most of their programs will be immediately flawed,
> because incapable to adapt to the reality of networking (it will work
> in the simple case, but give bizarre behavior in non simple cases).
> Don't get me wrong, there is a small class of applications
> where the IP address doesn't matter (and for those, 127.0.0.1 should
> be fine). But, from my experience, the vast majority of people wanting
> "the node IP address" have broken designs, i.e. it's not that they
> want any one of them, it's that they assume that only one exist.
>
> Now, there is only one thing that could qualify as "the node
> IP address", this is the IP address associated with the hostname :
> gethostbyname(hostname());
> IMHO, if you define the interface you are proposing, it should
> always return the result above, because this is a well defined
> semantic and it is more useful.
>
> But, I'm only one of the little guy here, so what I say
> doesn't matter much. Ask Alan or DaveM.
> Regards,
>
> Jean
> -
Also, many machines have many IP addresses, even when using the
same controller:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:DA:19:7A:7D
inet addr:10.100.2.224 Bcast:10.255.255.255 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:8339427 errors:4 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:4
TX packets:650046 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:4954 txqueuelen:100
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xb800
eth0:1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:DA:19:7A:7D
inet addr:10.106.100.167 Bcast:10.255.255.255 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xb800
eth0:2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:DA:19:7A:7D
inet addr:10.106.100.232 Bcast:10.255.255.255 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xb800
eth0:3 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:DA:19:7A:7D
inet addr:10.106.100.233 Bcast:10.255.255.255 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xb800
eth0:4 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:DA:19:7A:7D
inet addr:10.106.100.234 Bcast:10.255.255.255 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xb800
eth0:5 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:DA:19:7A:7D
inet addr:10.106.100.235 Bcast:10.255.255.255 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xb800
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:19174 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:19174 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.18 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Bush : The Fourth Reich of America
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