[14985] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: backbone routers' priority settings
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dean Anderson)
Wed Feb 4 16:03:41 1998
In-Reply-To: <1998Feb03.165600.1991.151199@rhino.ntc.nokia.com>
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 1998 15:43:50 -0500
To: vaananen@NASBPD01BS.ntc.nokia.com (Vaananen Pasi NTC/Boston),
marcs@znep.com (Marc Slemko)
From: Dean Anderson <dean@av8.com>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu (nanog)
> >In my travels I have heard numerous times that it is a popular practice to
> >give ICMP and even UDP traffic a lower priority on backbone routers in
> >times of congestion.
The question was about the priority of ICMP. Perhaps I erred in mentioning
that ICMP is important for congestion control. "Congestion control" is far
too vague. Perhaps I should have used the more generic term "network
control" instead.
ICMP is an important protocol, and cannot be blocked blindly. As a
protocol, it is not obsolete, though some functions are deprecated. In
certain cases however, ICMP is given a high priority in the TOS field.
--Dean
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Plain Aviation, Inc dean@av8.com
LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP http://www.av8.com
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