Network addressing
I have two machines plugged into a cable modem. Both have IP addresses
provided by the ISP. One is 24.6.xxx.xxx, and the other is 24.5.xxx.xxx.
Theoretically that's all fine 'cause 24. is an A class network. However the
ISP says that the netmask for these addresses should be 255.255.255.0, that
is, they are subnetting their class A net. And herein lies the problem:
looking at their netmask the machines believe they are on separate networks
and so to talk to each other they need the upstream machines -- the gateways
for each of them -- to be up. That doesn't happen all the time and anyway, I
want these two machines to be able to talk to each other without involving
the upstream machines at all.
So, my question is: can I simply set the netmask to 255.0.0.0 on both of
them and put appropriate entries into the /etc/hosts file? Is this likely to
break anything? Alternatively, can I use arp to specify the Ethernet address
- IP address correspondence, or something will get confused?
And a semi-related question: on a pure Win98 machine, how do you find out
the Ethernet address of the NIC card? I tried looking through the registry,
but didn't find anything that looked right.
Kaa
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