192824 - Limited broadcast handling, broken in Mac OS X

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[benc]

Mozilla 1.3b.

STEPS:
We have always had inconsistent handling of a URL that points a TCP based
protocol to the limited broadcast address:

Mac OS X CFM +  Linux refuse to connect to broadcast address
Win32 says "could not be found"
Mac classic times out.

Mac OS X, Mach-O has the worst behavior, it had no error and no pageload.

The underlying problem, according to TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol 1 [Stevens] is that
a lot of IP stacks are messed up. Some fail to recognize the IPv4 address as a
valid address, so they send it to DNS. Others literally accept the address but
mess up the subnet mask math and go to the default router. Apparently few
systems even handle this correctly, to check, you can use "ping 255.255.255". 

In any case, unlike other broadcast addresses, which are network and subnet
dependent, it is pretty obvious that you shouldn't send any requests with a
TCP-based protocol to this address, so I think we should trap it with an error.

I have not thought of a security or DOS problem based on the existing
implementations, but there is always the possibly that it will do something
completely stupid in an OS that I have not looked at.

Comment 1

[joakim_46]

I received a "document contains no data" error under Win32 (Windows XP)

Comment 2

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

gordon, can you look into this. :-)

Comment 3

[benc]

fixed platform.

david: you got that because "connection refused" was broken in bug 189965.

Comment 4

[benc]

The Mach-O behavior was especially odd becaus Chimera/Camino provides a
"connection refused" error.

Comment 5

[benc]

-> defaults

Update:
Mozilla 1.7RC2 branch builds (2004-05-13)
Windows XP and Mac OS X do not error on this link anymore. Linux acts as expected.