On Thu, 2005-12-08 at 17:37 +0000, James Wilkinson wrote: > I maintain that > * it's necessary in the particular case to which I was responding (at > least to do this to somewhere in the Internet) What makes you think you need to ping continuously for a few hours? Ping for a bit, fiddle with settings, ping a bit more, but not continuously. This sounds like uneducated fiddling that you're proposing to do something so prolonged. > * Google are competent enough to understand that if they provide a ping > service, people are likely to use it for the normal, expected > purposes of that service. Perhaps they might expect that people mightn't abuse the privilege and only ping to an acceptable amount. > * if someone provides a public service (e.g. a footpath), in the > absence of any contrary signs or an attempt to keep the public out, > there is an implied license to use that service in a reasonable > manner. Try reading some etiquette, etc., guides. No doubt you'll find advice about pinging (don't abuse ping responders, ask permission, etc.). It's incumbent upon you to use what's available sensibly and appropriately. > Unfortunately, in order to diagnose certain sorts of network problems, > this sort of activity is necessary. Especially when you have > intermittent problems when only a few packets get dropped. Sometimes you > will get about 20% packet drops over a few minutes in a period of a > couple of hours. So do the tests between people you have permission to do so with. The first test should be between the client and their first connection to the internet (their ISP, generally), anyway. If that's fine, then the problem's out of their hands; if it's not fine, then you're dealing with the only people who will be able to do something to help you. -- Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
