From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jan 8 09:51:27 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id JAA23900 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 8 Jan 1996 09:51:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from minnow.render.com (render.demon.co.uk [158.152.30.118]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id JAA23895 for ; Mon, 8 Jan 1996 09:51:20 -0800 (PST) Received: (from dfr@localhost) by minnow.render.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) id RAA23437; Mon, 8 Jan 1996 17:45:47 GMT Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 17:45:46 +0000 (GMT) From: Doug Rabson To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Using `ping' to diagnose network connections reasonable? In-Reply-To: <24751.821114877@time.cdrom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 8 Jan 1996, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > I'd like to add some code to sysinstall which will attempt to > `diagnose' a link before accepting the configuration parameters, > catching a lot of adapter misconfiguration and incorrect data errors > that sysinstall misses now (to fail less gracefully later). My > question is whether or not `ping' is a reasonable way to measure > connectivity between your host and the gateway & dns machines. Is it > reasonable to assume that if a host supports forwarding or DNS > queries, it will also answer pings? What if you've got pings blocked > somehow but allow DNS traffic through? I wouldn't want to flag a host > as `unreachable' when in fact it would have worked fine for its > intended purpose! That would be worse than no error checking at all. Why not just put up a dialog saying 'I am unable to ping ; it may be unreachable. Try using it anyway (y/n)?' That way the user gets the feedback and if they know pings are filtered or are just adventurous, they can ignore it. -- Doug Rabson, Microsoft RenderMorphics Ltd. Mail: dfr@render.com Phone: +44 171 251 4411 FAX: +44 171 251 0939