Having problems with limited broadcast

[Peter Steele]

We have a Python app that implements a DHCP-like protocol using limited
broadcast using address 255.255.255.255. Our code works fine on Linux
and FreeBSD but we cannot seem to get broadcast to work on FreeBSD.
We've tried both Python and C under FreeBSD 7.0.

 

I've found a lengthy discussion of this problem here:

 

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/99558

 

It appears some work has been done to correct this problem but if I
understand the discussion correctly it still is not resolved, at least
as of the timeframe of this thread. 

 

In our case, we have systems with no IP identity of any kind--no IP
address and no gateway, and they are connected only by switches. There
is no router in the network. They receive IP addresses through a special
service that we've written that runs on one of the systems, in response
to address request queries sent out by the systems. All communication is
done through limited broadcast. As I said, this works fine one our Linux
and Windows boxes but not FreeBSD.

 

Based on the discussion in the link above, it doesn't seem like the
problem was entirely resolved by the patches mentioned in this thread.
Has anything been done since this discussion took place. Surely there
must be a way to get limited broadcast to work under FreeBSD.