On 08/30/2018 11:56 AM, James Knott via talk wrote:
On 08/30/2018 11:45 AM, Scott Allen via talk wrote:
But what if you *don't* know someone lives at 1234 Bloor St. (and most of the residences on Bloor St. are vacant)? That doesn't stop many burglars or squatters.
If you knock on one of the doors (ping), you may get an answer, telling you that breaking into that residence at a later time may be of some value, thus worth more effort. There are other ways to determine if there's a computer or router there. For example traceroute will simply time out if the device doesn't respond, but there is a route to it. If there is no route to it, you get a different error message. That difference will tell you whether there's likely something at that address.
There are other ICMP messages that can be used for probing like timestamp(msg-13). All around all disabling ping does for you is to make it harder for your ISP or IT support people to see if you are having network problems and the really really stupid script kiddies trying to probe you. -- Alvin Starr || land: (905)513-7688 Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133 alvin@netvel.net ||