[OpenIndiana-discuss] OI Hipster becomes unreachable over network after a certain length of uptime

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022, Judah Richardson wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 13:27 Udo Grabowski (IMK) <udo.grabowski at kit.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> On 12/04/2022 20:00, John D Groenveld wrote:
>>> In message <e042f009-5caa-bae0-5181-d294d4ad213b at kit.edu>, "Udo
>> Grabowski (IMK)
>>> " writes:
>>>> No, it isn't, it's controlled by
>>>> /lib/svc/manifest/network/routing/route.xml ,
>>>> which is not enabled by default, as practically no machine
>>>> in the field is working as a router, you have to specifically
>>>> enable the route:default service.
>>>
>>> svc:/network/routing/route is enabled out of the box with
>>> OI-hipster-text-20211031.iso
>>
>> Why ?? This hasn't been the case for at least two decades of
>> Solaris and beyond.
>
> Probably an oversight, I'd guess. As with many such situations, things that
> aren't obviously and critically broken don't get much attention ;)

It is not really an oversight since all computers with a TCP/IP stack 
need to deal with some level of routing even if they are not acting as 
a gateway.  If there is ever more than one way to get "there" via the 
L2 network then running a higher-level routing protocol (e.g. RIP) can 
help the TCP/IP stack make the right decisions if the involved routers 
use the same protocol.  The host might participate in RIP or it might 
just act as an observer.

In many cases one or more computers are attached to a shared L2 
network with a single upstream router. In this case, using DHCP to 
configure the default route, or static configuration to provide the 
default route, can be a good choice. There are other means such as 
ICMP Router Discovery Protocol 
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICMP_Router_Discovery_Protocol) or even 
ICMP redirects.

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
Public Key,     http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/public-key.txt