Right now, alterator-net-eth is enforcing that the final octet of the IP address is not 0 or 255. This assumption is only valid on a /24 network (netmask of 255.255.255.0).

In most home environments, this will be the case. Otherwise, it will be an incorrect assumption. For example, a public-facing server will almost never be on a /24 network. Likewise, on a corporate network, the address space may be subnetted in such a way that X.X.X.0 and X.X.X.255 are not the network/broadcast addresses but are just additional available addresses. In both of these examples, the address may be assigned as opposed to chosen and getting a replacement may not be trivial.

The proper solution would be to enforce the available addresses based upon the netmask. The easy solution would be to just remove that enforcement altogether, as it's only correct for one particular network mask. I would have provided a patch to do one or both, but I failed to determine exactly where this check is being done. I assumed it was in /usr/bin/alterator-net-functions or /bin/shell-ip-address, but it seems that neither is correct.

For now, the workaround I've found is to add the correct address/bits to /etc/net/ifaces/ethX/ipv4address as alterator does not re-validate the address once it's been stored.