inet address removed but still in use

["Jeremy C. Reed" <reed@wcug.wwu.edu>]

I added an IP (IPs changed for this example):

 ifconfig eth0:1 192.168.197.179 netmask 255.255.255.128 up

It was listed with "ifconfig -a".

Then I removed it with:

 ifconfig eth0:1 192.168.197.179 down

And it was gone (not listed) from "ifconfig -a".

But I can still ping it from a remote machine and logon to it.

Then I tried to reset eth0:1 by giving it a different IP, but the old IP
still worked.

And I tried (as documented in linux/Documentation/networking/alias.txt):
 ifconfig eth0:1 down

Any ideas on how I get it to stop listening to that IP ...

I found a way: I assigned the IP to eth0:4, then I assigned a
different IP to eth0:4 and then it was gone (and I couldn't connect to
it).

Any ideas why I could connect to an IP that wasn't listed by ifconfig?

Can anyone reproduce this?

This is Debian 2.2 Linux 2.2.14.

  Jeremy C. Reed