--- Pete Turnbull <pete(a)dunnington.u-net.com> wrote: > On Nov 2, 16:30, Douglas Quebbeman wrote: > > What does 'broadcast' do (other than the obvious)? > > It's just a way of explicitly stating what the broadcast address for

> interface is. In every legitimate case I can think of, it should be > redundant if you provide the netmask (or the netmask is redundant if

I think it's useful when you have an ancient network where the broadcast address uses 0-bits, rather than 1-bits - i.e., ip 192.168.1.1 with a netmask of 192.168.1.0 and a broadcast address of 192.168.1.0 *not* 192.168.1.255. It's archaic, but allowed.