NAP/ISP Saturation WAS: Re: Exchanges that matter...

Thu Dec 19 22:29:48 UTC 1996

> In fact, responding to pings does not directly affect the speed of the
> hardware forwarding engine.  However, it does increase buffer utilization
> in the hardware.  It also deters routing protocol processing from
> happening, as it's consuming CPU.

The fact remains that a ping packet stream a Linux 386SX would barely
notice maxes out a 7010 (far more powerful CPU) that otherwise runs at 30%
with no difficulty whatsoever and causes all sorts of problems (like
it looses all its BGP sessions). Rather and obvious DoS attack, and
one which even MS were red faced enough to fix in their NT s/w pretty
sharpish.

Alex Bligh
Xara Networks