Networking help

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Mon, 16 Dec 2002, at 2:58pm, pll at lanminds.com wrote:
> While I'm inclined to agree, the question I'm still trying to answer is,
> why did work fine on some systems and not on others.

  Paul, you and I both know that computers have enough trouble working when
everything is configured right.  When you're doing something that's
obviously stupid, you shouldn't be surprised if demons fly out of your
nose[1].

> Additionally, why was it sporadic, and why did it eventually work? I.e.,
> if a system were in the state where it was not responding to pings, after
> about 20-30 seconds, it would start answering them.

  This is just a guess, but the timeout on ARP is 20 seconds, IIRC.  Maybe
it took that long for the computer to realize 'T' wasn't actually there, and
try routing around the failure [2].

> (Btw, I refuse to admit that you were right ;)

  I dunno, Paul.  I have to side with Derek on this one.  Here I was, all
along, giving you the benefit of the doubt.  I said to myself, "Paul's a
seasoned system administrator.  He couldn't possibly be dumb enough to
configure a gateway that doesn't exist."  I even said that in one of my
posts!  And here you are, trying to route packets over air.  :-)


Footnotes
---------
[1] See The Jargon File (http://www.jargon.org) for an explanation
[2] The failure, in this case, being the nut loose on the keyboard.  :)

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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