Network configuration in FreeBSD

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

> You need to set the default gateway in /etc/rc.conf.  Without a
> default gateway, you will need to add a default route with the
> route command.
>
> Without a route your machine will only be able to ping itself.

Unless something has changed dramatically -- and fairly recently --
a machine that knows its own IP address and netmask should be able
to ping anything on the same subnet as itself (an interface being
implicitly a route to any other IP address on the same subnet).