Posted by Harlequin on December 14, 2000 at 14:43:30:
I mentioned this in a reply below but after looking through the past few messages regarding sprintlink in the forum, I thought I would post another message with a "public service announcement" regarding what happens with ICMP traffic. To begin with, ICMP, for those who may not know, is Internet Control Message Protocol. ICMP is in essence a part of the IP stack, which is where layer 2 connectivity is established. This may be a bit much for the everyday user to understand but in practice, if layer 2 connectivity is established, there is no problems with the physical connection between point A and point B. Now, traceroute and ping are common tools which use the ICMP protocol. ICMP is also a source of headaches for firewall and security gurus everywhere. DoS (denial of service) and smurf attacks use ICMP traffic in their attacks which is often why firewalls will either not respond to that traffic or block it entirely. In the case of the MUD, it would appear that there is a firewall set up to block this traffic entirely, thus the "Response timed out" message on a traceroute. The same will happen for pings. I dislike sprintlink as much as the next CF'er but in their defense, the traceroutes and pings of late do not reflect connectivity problems. I hope this sheds a little light on the subject. I also hope there will actually be someone who gives a flying hoot... Harlequin