[Nottingham] Solaris 9 Ping Question

[Graeme Fowler]

On Wed 04 May 2005 08:24:38 BST , Moses O'Hara 
<cczmoses at unix.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:
> ####I'm pritty sure it's the TTL, eberything reports it as the TTL 
> value as in
<snip>

I'm guessing here that these two examples come from a Linux or Windows 
box, yes?

<snip>
> #### If I use the -s option I get the following
<snip again>

Looks faintly familiar... long time since I used Solaris in anger though.

> My thinking behind it works on the principle that Windows 98/ Win NT 
> and Linux all set the TTL values on the Echo's to diffrent values. 
> The routes are static so I  can account for any decrements made my 
> switching equipment to the TTL. There's currently an ICMP blocking 
> policy in force in the switch ACL's with the exception of this one 
> Solaris box which can send and recived ICMP packets across all 
> subnets.

IP TTLs are *not* decremented by switching. If your source and target 
devices have 1, 2, 3, 4 or 25 switches (unlikely, but possible!) 
between them then they simply won't care - your source and target 
communicate at Layer 3 (of the much-taught OSI model) or above; the 
switches are down in Layer 2.
If you have *routers* between source and target, each one decrements 
the TTL by 1 (normally...) as each packet traverses it.

Ideas... How about you install GNU Ping instead?

Graeme