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From: info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA
Newsgroups: fa.info-vax
Subject: Re: Pinging gateways
Message-ID: <2472@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 11-Oct-84 12:11:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.2472
Posted: Thu Oct 11 12:11:06 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Oct-84 01:48:24 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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From: Rudy.Nedved@CMU-CS-A.ARPA

You don't want to ping anything...all you do is clogg up the network
if everyone uses your solution. The best bet is to wait for the BBN
core gateways to get the "last bug" fixed where they forget about
little networks like MILNET. They seem to do a pretty good job...

...is it possible that you have te version of VMS software that
does not have a default gateway and you have to specify for each
network a gateway? Maybe this is the problem...we had this problem
and we got errors like "network unreachable" or something.

At the moment, TOPS-20/TENEX BBN code has pinging in it for PRIME
gateways...for one site this caused their connected IMP to "freeze"
every so many minutes because the PING code was sending a massive
number of PINGs to a large number of gateways (of course the problem
was also one of incorrect "channel" usage and can sort of be avoided).

All and all PINGs by non-gateway hosts is a bad idea...especially for
them poor 9600 and 1200 baud links some folks (like us) have.

-Rudy