Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!ucbvax!SDE.HP.COM!wunder
From: wunder@SDE.HP.COM (Walter Underwood)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Dumb question: ping w/o icmp support?
Message-ID: <8810251707.AA13953@hpsdel.sde.hp.com>
Date: 25 Oct 88 17:07:57 GMT
Article-I.D.: hpsdel.8810251707.AA13953
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 39


        I can practically guarantee that:
        a) those fingered vendors would fix their products
        b) you would get sued

This is silly.  I would dearly love to see some of our competitors
sue customers.  They'd never sell them a power cord after that.

There is no guarantee they'd fix the problem, either.

This sort of report has been done before, and published as a series
of RFCs.  The Smallberg surveys are summarized in RFC-847.  They
focussed on Telnet, FTP, and SMTP, but it was the same idea.

If you want to report this stuff, do it this way:

   state the CPU, OS, and release of the pinger and pingee,
   be prepared to repeat the configuration,
   make sure that the product is really advertised as TCP/IP,
   report it to the vendor at the same time you tell us.

If the information is true, you don't mis-represent the manufacturer,
and you do not have some other obligation (non-disclosure, procurement
regs), then nobody can complain.

The point about mis-representing the vendor is important.  If the
vendor doesn't claim that the product is TCP/IP, then they really
don't have an obligation to meet the specs.  It is still safe to point
out, "this is not advertised as TCP/IP, and sure enough, it doesn't
answer ICMP Echo."

An example of something that may use TCP, but isn't advertised as
such, is HP's OfficeShare for PCs.  It does disk and printer sharing
for PCs, with a PC or HP3000 server.  I suspect that it uses TCP/IP,
but it certianly isn't advertised as something that is supposed to
inter-operate with non-OfficeShare stuff.  I've never tried to ping
it, so I don't know if it supports ICMP Echo.

wunder