Change netmask with /etc/rc.d/network restart or reboot the machine?

[Jordi Espasa Clofent]

Hi all,

I've a lot of boxes in production with a lot of associated services 
(http, ftp, ssh, smtp, mysql...).
Because of internal administration reasons I need to ampliate my 
internal IPs range from /24 to /16; so I need to change my internal NIC 
settings. The last goal is make the change with _security_. I prefer a 
reboot with thier 2/4 minutes downtime than a odd miss-function in 
several production services.

I tend to think that the use of ifconfig(8) will be enough; of course, 
I'll also modify /etc/rc.conf 'ifconfig_<nic_id>' record for posterior 
reboots. Or maybe I has more sense to modify directly the /etc/rc.conf 
record and next use the '/etc/rc.d/netif restart'; or maybe make the 
change in /etc/rc.conf and reboot the machines.

¿What do you tink about?

-- 
Thanks,
Jordi Espasa Clofent