[ECOS] RedBoot: supporting netmask/gateway

[ECOS] RedBoot: supporting netmask/gateway

[Grant Edwards]

Adding netmask/gateway support to RedBoot is now on my official
list of things to do.  I guess if you're goint to screw up a
device configuration to the point where it won't talk to you at
all, you certainly want to be able to do it from 10000 miles
away. ;)

Supporting netmask/gateway probably means jumping from vanilla
BOOTP to DHCP in order to get a netmask value.  I might
fall-back to plain BOOTP and calculate the netmask based on the
IP address.

If anybody is already doing gateway support for RedBoot (or has
suggestions) yell now.

-- 
Grant Edwards
grante@visi.com

RE: [ECOS] RedBoot: supporting netmask/gateway

[Gary Thomas]

On 16-Mar-2001 Grant Edwards wrote:
> 
> Adding netmask/gateway support to RedBoot is now on my official
> list of things to do.  I guess if you're goint to screw up a
> device configuration to the point where it won't talk to you at
> all, you certainly want to be able to do it from 10000 miles
> away. ;)
> 
> Supporting netmask/gateway probably means jumping from vanilla
> BOOTP to DHCP in order to get a netmask value.  I might
> fall-back to plain BOOTP and calculate the netmask based on the
> IP address.
> 
> If anybody is already doing gateway support for RedBoot (or has
> suggestions) yell now.

I think you're in for a considerable amount of work.  If you're up
to it I applaud you :-)

Besides adding the handling for gateways, routing and possibly even
packet forwarding, you'll need to add IP fragmentation and better
TCP window support.  The [very simple] stack in RedBoot has none
of these.

You might get away with a slimmed down package if you know that there
is always a router/gateway nearby and you convince it to not hand
you anything ugly.

As I said, "tons of fun" :-)

Re: [ECOS] RedBoot: supporting netmask/gateway

[Grant Edwards]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2001 at 04:22:32PM -0700, Gary Thomas wrote:

>> Adding netmask/gateway support to RedBoot is now on my
>> official list of things to do.
> 
> I think you're in for a considerable amount of work.  If
> you're up to it I applaud you :-)
> 
> Besides adding the handling for gateways, routing and possibly
> even packet forwarding, you'll need to add IP fragmentation
> and better TCP window support.  The [very simple] stack in
> RedBoot has none of these.

I don't plan on doing packet forwarding or any sort of routing
other than having a single default gateway.  Basically: if the
dest IP for a packet isn't on the local network, send it to the
gateway.

The fragmentation and window issues may be a problem, but I
guess I'll trip over that when I come to it.  As far as DHCP is
concerned, I don't think I'm going to support lease renewal or
any tags other than netmask.

All want to be able to do is telnet to the bootloader, issue a
"load" command and a "go" command.  The host from which the
telnet session originates, and the TFTP server might both be
non-local.

> You might get away with a slimmed down package if you know
> that there is always a router/gateway nearby and you convince
> it to not hand you anything ugly.

The bootloader in our old products seems to work well enough
through gateways, and it's got a stack more primitive than
RedBoot's.  I'm sure there are some configurations where it
won't work, but if I can cover 90% of customer requests, that
will be good enough.

-- 
Grant Edwards
grante@visi.com