Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!ucbvax!CLASH.CISCO.COM!cire
From: cire@CLASH.CISCO.COM
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: broadcast pings
Message-ID: <8809241430.AA22093@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 19 Sep 88 22:16:06 GMT
References: <8809191225.AA06010@radc-lonex.arpa>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 30


Okay.  I agree.  Broadcast pings are generally a bad idea and we
should change implementations to ignore them.  Flooding is a bad
idea.

What I was relating earlier was based on past observations of
several production networks I've lived on (not administered).  I
observed that there were situations where an overworked net administrator
needed to establish that some portion of an internet is functional.
This is usually under extreme time pressure.  It is also on an internet
composed primarily of ethernets which grew together in a rather
random fashion.  Under these circumstances perhaps the broadcast
pings are usefull.  On well administered networks where the net
admins are intimately familar with well known hosts on each of the
network components broadcasts would clearly be inappropriate.  What
I was talking about is what I've seen to be more the norm.

Don't get me wrong.  Broadcast Pings and other related phenomena
can be really obnoxious.  I agree with that.

-c
cire|eric

Eric B. Decker
cisco Systems
Menlo Park, California

email:	cire@cisco.com
uSnail: 1360 Willow Rd.,  Menlo Park, CA  94025
Phone : (415) 326-1941