Re: missing icmp errors for udp packets

[Chris Wedgwood <cw@xxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 10:12:12PM +0300, Pekka Savola wrote:

    Me neither.  It would make 'ping -f' testing of your ISP's
    connections rather inconvenient ;-) ...

As someone who until recently was involved in architecture and
planning for a large ISP/carrier who's network spanned 3 continents (I
just like saying that, it sounds better than it really is!) I can
tell you plenty of people use similar tests.

They are bogus.  As is traceroute.

ping & traceroute are very useful, but there results can often be
misleading.

For example, cisco routers, of which sadly there are a few still in
use, do no respond to ICMP packets terribly reliably when they are
busy, which is pretty reasonable (the route packets instead).



  --cw