Re: Why 232 rounds?

[Fyodor <fyodor () insecure org>]

On Sun, Sep 09, 2012 at 06:05:25PM -0600, . wrote:
> In the nping man page, under miscellaneous options, it says that if
> you put -c 0 as an option nping will stop after 232 rounds. I'm just
> a little curious, why 232? Shouldn't -c 0 make it run infinitely?

Good question.  I investigated a bit and found that the Docbook XML
source code for the Nping man page actually says:

  If a value of 0 is specified, Nping will run for
  2<superscript>32</superscript> rounds.

So it is supposed to render as 2 to the 32nd power (e.g. 4 billion
rounds).  And it does render correction on the online version of the
man page[1], but I have the same problem as you when I read the nroff
version.

I'll change the man page to just say that Nping runs continuously if
'-c 0' is specified.  Perhaps it does stop at 4 billion, but I think
that's a bug we should fix.  Probably just changing it from a 32 to 64
bit integer will do the trick for all practical purposes.  I'll add
something to the Nmap todo too.

Cheers,
Fyodor

[1] http://nmap.org/book/nping-man-miscellaneous-options.html
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