I suggested: > Try "ping google.com" for several hours, and see how many packets you > drop. Tim wrote: > I hope you don't mean continuously. That would constitute abuse. That's a fairly harsh definition of abuse you've got. They've made the ping service available in the same way as they make the HTTP service available. Accessing Google's web pages once a second would not be OTT for a suitably busy site. Continuous pinging *is* necessary occasionally as a form of network diagnostic: it tells the network administrator whether (and in conjunction with traceroute, where) to complain about network timeouts. I selected Google partly because of the size and capacity of their servers and network connections. I don't think I'm abusing Google. I'm using the facilities they make available in the way they're supposed to be used. And I'm not taking anywhere *near* unreasonably large amounts of resources to do so. So why do you think it's abuse? James. -- E-mail address: james | In the Royal Air Force a landing's OK, @westexe.demon.co.uk | If the pilot gets out and can still walk away. | But in the Fleet Air Arm the outlook is grim, | If your landings are duff and you've not learnt to | swim.