[Python-Dev] PEP 3144: IP Address Manipulation Library for the Python Standard Library

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 4:45 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de>wrote:

> > No, I just said its conventionally used as that but its not definition
> > of a broadcast (in fact you can have any valid host address defined
> > as broadcast as long as all members of the network agree on that)
>
> You could, but then you are violating existing protocol specifications.
>
> RFC 1122 mandates, in sections 3.2.1.3 and 3.3.6, that certain addresses
> MUST be understood as broadcast addresses, by all nodes (independent of
> configuration).
>
> I think a Python IP address library should conform to all relevant RFCs.
>

Yes, but section 3.3.6 also states:

There is a class of hosts (4.2BSD Unix and its derivatives, but not 4.3BSD)
that use non-standard broadcast address forms, substituting 0 for -1. All
hosts SHOULD recognize and accept any of these non-standard broadcast
addresses as the destination address of an incoming datagram. A host MAY
optionally have a configuration option to choose the 0 or the -1 form of
broadcast address, for each physical interface, but this option SHOULD
default to the standard (-1) form.

So it sounds like doing what I suggested earlier (default to [-1], allow for
customization) is actually required by the RFC :-).  Although it does sound
like the RFC only requires that you be able to customize to [0] rather than
[-1], rather than any address.  In practical terms though I believe it is
possible to do as Tino suggests and configure any crazy address you want to
be the broadcast address (or addresses, even) for a network.

I think setting the broadcast address to something else just does not need
> to be supported.


It is unusual, but frankly, needing to actually do operations on broadcast
addresses at all is also a pretty unusual task.  Broadcast itself is a
somewhat obscure corner of networking.  I suspect that in many deployments
that need to write significant code to deal with broadcast addresses, rather
than the usual default stuff, funky configurations will actually be quite
common.

I would not be surprised to find that there are still some 4.2BSD VAXes
somewhere doing something important, and some Python may one day be called
upon to manage their networks.
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