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