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From: lumsdon@dtoa1.dt.navy.mil (Lumsdon)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Wollongong TCP/IP ping question, VMS
Message-ID: <2604@nems.dt.navy.mil>
Date: 16 Jul 90 21:33:26 GMT
References: <2509@nems.dt.navy.mil> <1990Jul10.172440.15458@spectrum.CMC.COM>
Sender: news@nems.dt.navy.mil
Reply-To: lumsdon@dtoa1.dt.navy.mil (Esther Lumsdon)
Organization: David Taylor Research Center, Bethesda, MD
Lines: 27

In article <1990Jul10.172440.15458@spectrum.CMC.COM> lars@spectrum.CMC.COM (Lars Poulsen) writes:
>In article <2521@nems.dt.navy.mil> lumsdon@dtoa1.dt.navy.mil
>   (Esther Lumsdon) writes:
>> [PING requires SYSPRV]
>>Is it safe to install PING with SYSPRV privilege?

[....]

>The reason PING requires privilege, is that it connects to a "raw"
>socket; i.e. it interfaces at a level of the network package where you
>can send *anything you like*. To prevent user programs from forging
>authentic looking datagrams that pretend to be from somewhere else, the
>network kernel has been made to insist that only privileged programs do
>these things.

Thank you for pointing this out.

Thanks for all responses. It has become a moot point. NCSA's tcp/ip
for MS-DOS requires (inexplicably) that the VAX PING the PC in order
to get communications to work after both machines have rebooted. We
are now using FTP Software's tcp/ip for MS-DOS, which has not exhibited
this strange behavior.

--------------------------  Esther Lumsdon  --------------------------------
lumsdon@dtoa1.dt.navy.mil  lumsdon@dtrc.dt.navy.mil
lumsdon%dtrc.navy.mil@uunet.uu.net
"Wherever you go, there you are" -Buckaroo Bonzai