Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!ginosko!husc6!bu-cs!kwe
From: kwe@bu-cs.BU.EDU (kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent W. England))
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Does anyone use IP options?
Summary: Caution still advised
Message-ID: <37271@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 29 Aug 89 17:43:50 GMT
References: <11990001@hpspdra.HP.COM> <8908290825.AA23996@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: kwe@buit13.bu.edu (Kent England)
Followup-To: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Organization: Boston U. Information Technology
Lines: 28

In article <8908290825.AA23996@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
 cire@CISCO.COM (cire|eric) writes:
>
>It depends on the implementation.  I haven't heard of a crash blamed on
>options in quite a while so I suspect that most implementations coexist
>peacefully.
>
	That's what I thought, too, until someone new to NEARnet went
out a couple of months ago and accidentally crashed an old jvncnet vax
router in our backyard named coventry.mit.edu, using record route or
source route, from one of our cisco routers.  Fortunately for me, I
had hesitated to explore much with these options based on the sage
advice of my colleagues here at BU.  :-)  At any rate, still somewhat
of a surprise, given that coventry was such a strategic resource.

	Fortunately, while coventry still lives, it no longer routes,
so if it continues to crash it has little effect.  Sorry, Dave, don't
know if it is available to run network time protocols.

	BTW, if I can interject a little operational comment in this
list, those of you experiencing severe difficulty in reaching us up
here is the Northeast (NEARnet country) should be finding things much
better these days, after some critical, chronic problems were
dispatched this week.  (I knew I shouldn't have said anything!  All my
snmpxmon displays just went dotted!     :-)  Thanks to those who took
the trouble to sent us reports from faraway.

	--Kent England, Boston U, etc