Re: Router modifications to deal with smurf

["John A. Tamplin" <jat () traveller com>]

On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, Kelly J. Cooper wrote:

> And if a vendor wants to argue that they are in keeping with RFC 1812 
> by having the forwarding of directed broadcasts on by default BUT 
> do not have a knob built in to turn it off, then that looks a bit 
> hypocritical and they open themselves up to all sorts of taunting.

Or they could have a knob for each interface, and a knob which sets the
default for each interface which doesn't have its own setting.  Then the
default for the global default parameter could be RFC1812 compliant, yet
allow a user to easily change it without having to update every interface.
That would still mean that someone who started using the router without
setting that parameter would be contributing to the problem, but they have
to configure the box anyway to use it.

As it is, it is easy to forget to set it on a new interface (although 
typically those are point-to-point links which only have a 2x factor 
anyway), at least until you have been burned once. 

John Tamplin                                    Traveller Information Services
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