It would be very useful if we can take multiple IP adresses on 1 device.
I could see this being useful for having the device on a certain ip that is always the same and can be use for e.g. management applications and the device could also have an end user configurable IP that they could use to use the device…
E.g. the management IP could be 192.168.1.1/24 and the end user ip 10.2.1.211/23
I got this idea from similar functionality in windows, you can assign multiple IP/subnet combos to a network adapter in the adapter settings
my network guy hat on for a second - this actually doesn’t make much sense in most scenarios, as the IP range would either be filtered or at least not routed, and many “corporate” types of network would isolate the traffic on VLANs and you’d not be able to jump across them. Plus, what happens when you plug two of these devices into the network? Couple that with APIPA capability, where you can connect the device you want to manage and a laptop together, and hey presto you should be able to get to the thing for management.
But hey, for your own giggles, sure, I can see how you’d get some value out of assigning a second address.
Such feature is a double edge sword. It can be great but can be a disaster.
Either way, the stack does not support having multiple addresses and that means the change require deep scary changes. But it is something to think about in the future.
