How can I speed up the assignment of multiple IP addresses to the
network interface of a Solaris machine? I am assigning 8000 IP
addresses to a Sun Ultra 10 machine running the Solaris 8 OS. I run a
script file with commands like "ifconfig hme0 addif 172.16.60.0
netmask 255.255.0.0 up". While the assignment of the first 2000
addresses takes less than 2 minutes, the next 2000 addresses take
almost 15 minutes and it gets worse for the next 2000 addresses. A few
notes. All the IP addresses are within a single subnet. Once the IP
addresses are assigned I open a couple of UDP ports on each IP
address. I am willing to add more RAM or use several physical
interfaces if it will help to speed the assignment process
significantly.

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Clarification of Question by upandaway-ga on 30 Jul 2003 01:01 PDT

In order to increase the number of IP addresses that can be assigned
to the physical interface I first issued the command "ndd -set /dev/ip
ip_addrs_per_if 1-8192".

I would recommend trying several qfe cards at the same time.  You
should be able to add an interface to each interface of the qfe
independantly of the others.  Hence, if you have the default hme0,
plus two qfe cards, you end up with 9 interfaces to add virtual ones
onto.  This should speed up the process by a factor of 9.  Make sure
you turn off 'local-mac-address?' in your prom though.

The other way to investigate is to look into doing multiple additions
in the same command.  For instance, putting in a ksh script:
ifconfig hme0 addif 172.16.60.0 netmask 255.255.0.0 up \
addif 172.16.61.0 netmask 255.255.0.0 up \
addif 172.16.62.0 -depreciated netmask 255.255.0.0 up

(etc)  I have not tried this myself, but a scripted approach would be
quick to do.  Different flags on the ifconfig might speed up the
process.  Also, making sure you have /etc/notrouter touched will
prevent the RIP traffic generated.

You might also want to explain why you want to do this, as there are
sometimes easier methods to solve a particular problem.  For instance,
you don't need 8000 unique IPs to load test a website.  Or, you could
just use your router to redirect traffic if that's the problem.  Let
me know if you have further questions/clarifications.