Misconfigured gateway, and yet it works.

[LoudSpeakly]

So I was looking at a Server 2003 machine which was sitting on a /28 network, and noticed that someone had botched the network settings on the machine. The subnet mask was 255.255.255.0 and the default gateway was .254 when it should have been .14... and yet the machine was able to route outside the network and contact the rest of the WAN. Tracert showed the correct router as the first hop and data went on it's merry way.

Does anyone know what system / service this server used to figure out the real boundaries of the network and route accordingly?

[ThonEney]

Are you sure the settings were enabled?

[LoudSpeakly]

Quite sure. It has only one interface and those were the settings it held.

[smagd]

There's dynamic routing protocols, like RIP (http://www.petri.co.il/configure-windows-2003-server-exchange-rip-cisco-router.htm). These allow a router to tell your machine how to route to places your machine doesn't have a static entry for.

[Takon Orlani]

There's dynamic routing protocols, like RIP (http://www.petri.co.il/configure-windows-2003-server-exchange-rip-cisco-router.htm). These allow a router to tell your machine how to route to places your machine doesn't have a static entry for.

Was just about to say this.