[43753] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Fwd: Re: Digital Island sponsors DoS attempt?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Leo Bicknell)
Thu Oct 25 22:38:18 2001
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 22:33:43 -0400
From: Leo Bicknell <bicknell@ufp.org>
To: nanog@merit.edu
Message-ID: <20011025223343.A58428@ussenterprise.ufp.org>
Mail-Followup-To: nanog@merit.edu
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In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20011025133050.00b335d0@localhost.digisle.net>; from jasonf@digisle.net on Thu, Oct 25, 2001 at 01:31:34PM -1000
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Thu, Oct 25, 2001 at 01:31:34PM -1000, Jason Forester wrote:
> As the message says, this is not an attack of any kind. It is a system
> which collects metrics for our Footprint Content Delivery System.
>
> The system is attempting to determine the closest servers to your network,
> to provide good service to your customers when they download from Footprint
> customers such as Microsoft.
Since no one has asked the relivant question, I'll ask.
Does this system probe networks only in response for a request for
content, or are networks monitored even when there are no requests
for content?
While I don't think {ping,dns,other} probes in response to a content
request are the best way to offer better service to the user, they
are at least in response to a user request, and proportional to the
number of user requests. I would find it hard to call them 'wrong',
or 'bad'.
Probing other networks 'just in case' a request comes from that
network is highly ineffective, introduces useless load to the
network, and is just plain rude.
--
Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request@tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org
