I'm dealing with a vendor that claims his application requires Windows to
handle 3 digits in all octets of the IP address, and consequently this is the
reason his application is not working. I've tried the following on multiple
machines, from Windows 2000 to Windows 2008. They all respond the same.

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C:\Documents and Settings\ABaskervilleping 192.168.001.025

Pinging 192.168.1.21 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.1.21: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=59
....
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C:\Documents and Settings\ABaskervilleping 172.016.002.001

Pinging 172.14.2.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
....
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C:\Documents and Settings\ABaskervilleping 010.025.100.001

Pinging 8.21.100.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
....
========

I did a packet capture, and the packets are leaving all Windows systems with
the incorrect IP address. That is, the ARP requests are not correct initially.

For whatever reason, the vendor is able to get the systems to ping properly,
but I have access to several networks and none work.

I'm very curious if this is widespread and if anyone has an explanation. I'd
say the leading 0's should not impact anything, so to me I'd rate is as a
noncritical Windows network bug.

Thank you.