Having to use Outlook and Pipex's swerver. Life doesn't get much worse.....
The last time it was down, it was down for a couple of days - so I went and got a claranews account. I've never regretted it.
Bear was seen penning the following ode to ... whatever: Hehe. Actually, my ISP does offer newsgroup access as well but I prefer the 'scrubbed' feed that the Goiman server offers. Not to mention that it's back up now anyway.
Pip was seen penning the following ode to ... whatever: It wasn't earlier this morning, but it seems to be back amongst the living now.
Only a poorly set up server is likely to return a ping these days - most systems will ignore an external ping query - hence the timeout.
Goodie: I'm not the only one who thought that. I can recall reading some Linux network administration thingy (an O'Reilly title, or a HowTo, IIRC), and it said, 'don't turn off ping'.
Oh I'm not saying that it's not done. I just learned that it wasn't supposed to be, er, not done. As it were. When I worked in IT [1], I'd set up a machine, and then try a ping of some well-known site. I did this with the 'don't switch off ping' mentality, and when of course, I got zilcho returns ... %/sbin/ping -c 4 www.liberation.fr PING www.liberation.fr (194.117.209.179): 56 data bytes --- www.liberation.fr ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss %/sbin/ping -c 4 www.cnn.com PING cnn.com (64.236.16.20): 56 data bytes --- cnn.com ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss .... I immediately assumed that my installation of the server in question was fucked. [1] *spit*
C:\>ping www.bbc.co.uk Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.224.36] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 212.58.224.36: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=246 <snip> C:\>ping www.demon.net Pinging www.demon.net [194.159.245.141] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 194.159.245.141: bytes=32 time=65ms TTL=244 <snip> Reply from 194.159.245.141: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=244 Reply from 194.159.245.141: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=244 Reply from 194.159.245.141: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=244 Ping statistics for 194.159.245.141: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 12ms, Maximum = 65ms, Average = 26ms C:\>ping www.royalmail.com Pinging www.royalmail.com [195.33.101.82] with 32 bytes of data: etc.. Mind you, Microsoft, Sun and Amazon don't work, so it depends on what you call major, I guess.
[Kiki:~] mike% ping bbc.co.uk PING bbc.co.uk (212.58.228.154): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 212.58.228.154: icmp_seq=0 ttl=244 time=3511.64 ms 64 bytes from 212.58.228.154: icmp_seq=1 ttl=244 time=172.231 ms 64 bytes from 212.58.228.154: icmp_seq=2 ttl=244 time=171.064 ms 64 bytes from 212.58.228.154: icmp_seq=3 ttl=244 time=171.828 ms 64 bytes from 212.58.228.154: icmp_seq=4 ttl=244 time=174.277 ms 64 bytes from 212.58.228.154: icmp_seq=5 ttl=244 time=176.528 ms 64 bytes from 212.58.228.154: icmp_seq=6 ttl=244 time=171.347 ms ^C --- bbc.co.uk ping statistics --- 7 packets transmitted, 7 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max = 171.064/649.845/3511.64 ms
Good idea to block if you host a website that people like to launch DoS attacks on. My knowledge of BGP is hazy, but it doesn't use ping[1], Google will be your friend here. [1] Something to do with AS and how BGP shares the information, meaning it will use the shortest distance between two AS's. Like I said - hazy!
ITYM ICMP.. Hint - your firewall is unlikely to be a router.. and no - switching off *most* ICMP types won't make the internet slower. ISP's switching off BGP on the other hand.. You don't need to. Especially not on a home system - if you were a transit carrier it might make some differnce though. Phil
