nanog mailing list archives

Re: packet loss question


From: William Herrin <bill () herrin us>
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2016 23:53:38 -0400

On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 3:52 PM, Ken Chase <math () sizone org> wrote:
ICMP is allowed to be dropped by intervening routers. Someone will quote an RFC
at us shortly.

Hi Ken,

That's not correct. Routers might not generate an ICMP time-exceeded
packet for every packet whose TTL reaches zero, but that's not the
same thing. Routers dropping ICMP packets in transit would be bad.
Protocols like TCP depend on path MTU discovery and path MTU discovery
critically depends on ICMP.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin () dirtside com  bill () herrin us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>


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