Hi Urban !
> Just performing a sanity check. The "Killer Ping", "Ping o' Death" whatever
> is only a concern from hosts on the SAME network, right? Once the packet
> goes through a router it gets fragmented and re-assembled, right? Does re-
> assembly still cause the machine to crash?
Yes, it will crash. It is not the individual packet which is the problem.
It is all packets which together form a deadly ICMP. However its not
only the ICMP which gives you this problem, but probably most protocols.
The only fix possible is to get it right at the kernel level for
the TCP/IP.
No simple device (like a gateway) can remove the problem by doing sanity
check. To do that it would have to keep track of all packets in all
connections. This is not feasable without using a lot of both RAM
and processing power. Worst of all, it will introduce unacceptable latency.
Regards
Peter Maersk-Moller
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--- Any opinion or statements below will be of my own and not the JRC ---
Peter Maersk-Moller
Network Manager
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TP441 Email : peter .
maersk-moller @
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