[c-nsp] using the first and last ip address of a range > /24 in a local pool

[nick hatch]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 4:15 PM, David DeSimone <fox at verio.net> wrote:

> Tassos Chatzithomaoglou <achatz at forthnet.gr> wrote:
> > Has anyone met any issues with .0 and .255 as host addresses?
>
> There is a longstanding bug in Windows TCP/IP stack which prevents it
> from communicating properly with hosts whose final octet is .0 or .255.
>
> The bug was fixed in Vista, but there are a lot of old Windows XP
> clients out there.
>
>
I've heard about this bug for a long time, but have never seen it myself.
There must be some caveat that isn't widely reported.

I administered a /19 divided mostly into /23s, the .0 and .255 addresses
were used by clients, via DHCP leases. This was during 2003-2008 -- XPs
golden years -- and we never received any complaints.

I even attempted to reproduce the problem with an XP (SP2) workstation on a
.255 myself, no success. Initiating and receiving connections from other XP
workstations worked just fine, on- and off-net.

-Nick