Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!SCCGATE.SCC.COM!oconnor
From: oconnor@SCCGATE.SCC.COM (Michael J. O'Connor)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: IP options crash our Sun gateway
Message-ID: <8803181601.AA07289@sccgate.scc.com>
Date: 18 Mar 88 16:01:45 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 19

Maybe I should have worded it differently.  It's my contention that a Sun
gateway running a version of SOS earlier than 4.0 can crash when it attempts
to forward any option bearing datagram not just the record route types.  The
only option generating software that I have access to is the Ping with RR and
LSRR which was described in this forum a month or so ago.  People were crashing
our gateway every time they tried to send one of those packets through our SMI
box.
	Excuse my pontificating, but it is the presence of IP-options that is
optional not the implementation.  I don't have a copy of the Mil-Std handy but
my copy of the RFC states "Every internet module must be able to act on every
option."  I just don't think that crashing was the act that the authors had in
mind.
	The part that still irritates me is SMI's attitude that this is a bug
that I should be able to live with until they release SOS 4.0.  On top of that
there is the rumor that the Sunlink DDN package will not be updated until well
after the 4.0 release.  If true, that means our gateway will be the last machine
upgradable to SOS 4.0.

				Mike