On 01/09/2013 01:57 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote: ...and like this from NCP under VMS: NCP> connect node gw physical address <MAC address> via <circuit-name> Note that the MAC address must have its octets delimited by colons under Linux, and hyphens under VMS. NCP>connect node gw physical address AA-00-04-00-01-F4 via ISA-0 Console connected (press CTRL/D when finished) User Access Verification Username: NCP> Uhhh...HOLY CRAP! That works from outside my network?! Is it working because you specified the circuit which gave it a path, or because it gleaned the DECnet area/node address from the (changed-by-DECnet) MAC address? I'm guessing the latter. (Peter?) It works on any LAN, including across bridges, so the various Internet based bridges we have make this work over some distance. The communication is via MOP remote console packets, which are not routed (just like LAT). The addressing is direct to the MAC address, whatever that happens to be at the destination. If the node you want to talk to supports MAC address aliases, the original address might work, but in any case the DECnet style Ethernet address will work. That was my belief before five minutes ago, when Brian was messing with me and got me all excited. I was certain that MOP was an unroutable, LAN-only protocol like LAT. But then, apparently folks have been booting DECservers via HECnet..? Nothing strange with that. The bridge makes it appear as if you are on the same ethernet segment. That makes sense...This will only work over bridged links, though. My Cisco GRE link (for example, in my configuration) should not propagate that traffic. (and if it does, is anyone else seeing my LAT service announcements? ;)) If (say) Brian and I were to create bridge-groups in our IOS configs that bridge across our Ethernet segments and the tunnel interfaces, that should work. I'm not too interested in doing that (it'd be lots of traffic) but I'd expect it to work. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA