The System

We will use a system that is connected to the internal network, but doesn't have any external routing capabilities. We will also assume that it has been built to our standard configuration described in Chapter 11, “Connecting to the Local Area Network.” Among other things, this means that both Router Discovery (RDISC) and Routing Information Protocol (RIP) have been disabled. The reason for disabling all the external routes is that this machine will only be used as a fallback system in case the main network fails, so we don't need to add them to start with (besides which, it makes everything much clearer to describe and document!).

Let's create the hosts entry for the machine and couple it to the LAN:

cesium# cat /etc/inet/hosts
<lines removed for clarity>
#
# PPP Dialout client
#
192.168.44.55   cesium   cs
<lines removed for clarity>
cesium#

Now that we have a rough idea of the hardware and software components that are involved, let's look at each one in more detail and show the settings for them.