Should the default gateway be configured even on the responding side

[Danijel Gorupec]

A quick quesiton... Suppose there are two Ethernet subnets and a gateway in between. From one PC in the first subnet we are going to establish TCP/IP connection to another PC on the second subnet.

 

Obvously, the default gateway IP address must be defined in the first PC. But the question is, should the default gateway be defined also in the other PC (this one is only accepting the connection)?

 

(If I understand IP networking correctly, there is no need for the accepting side to know its gateway. But I am not sure.)

 

Thanks.

[cypress]

For the specific case you describe, only to respond to outside requests, foreknowledge of the gateway is not required since the local path will be included in the addressing header, assuming the network driver initializes and enables listening ports for requests outside the subnet even when it does not consider the network configuration to be complete. This will be the sticking point and it will be dependent on the device driver.

[Danijel Gorupec]

Okay, thanks cypress for confirming my thoughts.

[cypress]

you're welcome. Good luck working that out.