CompTIA Magic+

Chapter 8 - CIDR

"So…it's not supposed to do that right?" Ben asked casually.

"No…" Gellis replied slightly taciturn.

"Oh okay, so you br."

"NO! I DID NOT!" Gellis screamed

Ben smiled faintly before picking up Bunny-Chan to cuddle. Leaning against the faux leather of the chair was actually quite soothing. 'Although, I guess it may not be faux, or leather, for that matter'. Ben shrugged the idle though away.

He and Gellis had left the school about 2 hours ago. In another few minutes they should be pulling up to Gellis fine manor. Free to ogle the maids….and probably Gellis' mom as well.

That is how things were "supposed" to be.

Their car had unfortunately stopped functioning, just a bout a mile away from Gellis estate. "Well Gellis, do you have the ability?" Ben asked curiously.

While Ben was already more than adept at messing with the Magical Sygaldry of Bunny-Chan that didn't mean he was well versed in all forms of it. As such he was content to sit back and learn by watching Gellis.

Sadly it seems that his friend had his own share of blind spots. He shook his head wearily before resigning himself to inevitable. "I guess we just gotta call Mom. F.U.C.K. I hate it when I have to do this." Collapsing in a heap in the chair Ben merely shook his head.

"Yeah, I get it. My mom and I….we had a very combative relationship. Made asking for favors impossible."

Gellis barely moved.

Ben instead focused his attention on the Sygaldry of the car.

"Telnet"

Commanding the mental window Ben accessed the vehicles subsystems.

The data, the sure overwhelming amount! To compare this to Bunny-Chan…..would be unfair. It was like comparing a toy rabbit to a car! In all ways was the quality severely upgraded, all except for security.

"How has this not been a problem yet." Ben shook his head and logged with the username admin, and blank password.

It was amazing how often that worked, and with admin privileges to boot! According to Gellis the way Ben saw the formation of Sygaldry was a bit unique, so perhaps it was just that security the mana was difficult, or couldn't be done. That was POSSIBLE. However, where they could, or would not. Ben was different. He made sure to securely lock the Sygaldry system of his toys so that only he could use them.

In the case of Bunny-Chan? It merely means that she would be devoted to him, and secretly conspire against anything else.

He had tried to get Gellis to hack into Bunny-Chan, but oddly he had been unable to access her even originally when she was completely open. Ben could only assume his skills didn't go that far.

The Car though was a thing of wonder and beauty. Looking at the logical top-down setup to the different mana nodes Ben inspected theme Carefully.

Stability…..good

Force…..good

Direction….Good.

OH There!

There near the bottom the bridge for the exhaust to receive mana had….broken?

Ben was a bit confused, he didn't think these links COULD be removed. If they can be removed, then wouldn't that be the work of someone….high…up…

"Do they do this to you a lot?" Ben tried to keep the aggravation out of his voice as his mine began the Mathematical work of relinking the Exhaust the rest of the sygaldry. From the perspective of a Network administrator the problem was quite basic.

Currently the Exhaust was requesting a useable IP to be able to access the internal resources of the Sygaldry i.e. the Mana regulation and Shaping modules.

The problem? There is no "Mana DHCP" at least not that Ben had seen so far. That meant that all IP allocations would be static, therefore unchanging.

The lease time on the IP for the Exhaust was set to expire the next time it pulled on the resources located in the "Navigation". It would only do this as the vehicle slowed down from cruising speeds, to the city enforced speed limit.

"Yeah, it was probably my littlest sister… She's…. Well kind of like you I suppose." Gellis muttered.

Ben nodded half listening to him.

Since all IP's are being used, and none are available Ben would simply have to make one

CIDR would be the easiest way

Since the starting IP was already in the Class B range there really shouldn't be an issue of available IP's, however Ben also thought that it would be good idea to get all of these process onto their own Subnets anyway. That may even improve the performance significantly since they would not need to wait for the other services to be able to draw on the resources.

"So let's do some fun math!"

172.30.17.1

Subnet Mask 255.255.224.0

"Now, just assign the IP's."

"Then there was this one time where she locked me outside of the house in the middle of the freezing rain!"

"Oh yeah, Gellis try the car."

Ben commanded doing a very poor job of pretending to listen.

Since he had broken the IP address from 172.30.17.1 with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 this would allow for the new IP Addresses to be assigned to the free modules. Not only was he able to get the Exhaust reconnected, if he wasn't very much wrong, then many of the "Luxury" features oughta work as well.

VROOM

Like a brand new car the engine roars to life. The chassis of the vehicle vibrates violently to the touch, but at least it turns on.

"Okay, we don't wanna be late Gellis, so floor it!" Ben yelled.

Feeling the need for speed himself Gellis smiled grandly before doing just that.

*Boom*

Just like that the sound barrier had been broken as the two speeded in the vague direction of Gellis' house.

"Uh…Ben…"

"Yeah, Buddy."

"You did more than just fix the car…."

"Yeah.."

"Will you at least say sorry."

"…"