This may be a dumb question, but why not bridge between the FDDI and
the rest of your ethernet? So far we only have one machine on FDDI, so
all its traffic crosses the bridge, but as soon as other servers join
it, they will talk to each other via FDDI, and everything else via
Ethernet. Eventually, existing departmental Ethernet legs will be
bridged to an FDDI backbone. Servers will be directly connected and
never need to use their Ethernet interfaces, apart from the rare
failure of an FDDI card - in which case I hook the server onto an
Ethernet leg and configure the interface manually during the repair.
We have no history of IP routing and subnetting, because we had other
protocols before IP (DECnet, LAT); remote sites are joined via remote
Ethernet bridges. It's not clear to me what the advantage of a
multi-homed host might be, but very clear that there are disadvantages
with network services (e.g. AFS, MIT kerberos) which assume a single IP address.
Peter Lister [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Computer Centre,
Cranfield Institute of Technology, Voice: +44 234 750111 ext 3157
Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL England Fax: +44 234 750875
