operational: icmp echo out of control?

Thu May 23 21:05:01 UTC 2002

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard A Steenbergen [mailto:ras at e-gerbil.net]
> Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 4:36 PM
> To: Mark Kent
> Cc: nanog at merit.edu
> Subject: Re: operational: icmp echo out of control?
> 
> Path latency doesn't change much, you can determine this with very few
> probes. Reachability does not need to be continuously probed, 
> you can take
> cues from other data to decide if you need to re-probe. 

I wonder if this can be used to profile a network for the sales droids? If
one of your routers is being pinged continuously, this might be an
indication they are using some sort of "Route Optimization/Failover" box.
Especially if you ask them why they are pinging you on the order of 1-5pps
and they can't really give an answer and don't turn it down. Sic-em! Sell
them that managed BGP!

For instance, the FatPipe box does this sort of thing "so you don't have to
use BGP" to (sort of) multihome. Link failure is detected by loss of ping
response. Failover (link and DNS) is under five seconds, so to prevent
premature failover, ping often, and only failover if you take, say, three
lost packets. 

The question for network operators is (just so this is kind of OT), is this
kind of monitoring by the customer more of an annoyance, or a real item of
operational concern? How would you react if you had a customer pinging the
router on your side of his link (or farther upstream) that refused to limit
the pings?

James H. Smith II NNCDS NNCSE
Professional Services - Network Engineer
The Presidio Corporation

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