For residential users on cable-modem, the plan will deplete a scarce resource: upstream transmit opportunities. The DOCSIS MAC layer imposes an upper limit on the quantity of upstream transmissions (essentially PPS limitation, unless concatenation is employed, and concatenation is probably moot if standard ping with 1-second minimum transmit intervals is the upstream payload). If the load actually causes a problem in upstream operation, then folks using TCP for downstream service (e.g. surfing) will see their throughput cut. Regardless, the cable companies will probably try to disable this service, so they can avoid the financial impact of improving their infrastructure. They need to conserve the money in order to launch new unsolicited bids for Disney... At 09:14 AM 11/29/2004, you wrote:
Techdirt has an article this morning that discusses how Lycos Europe is encouraging their users to run a screensaver that constantly "pings servers suspected to be used by spammers" and also suggests that "In other words, it's a distributed denial of service attack against spammers by Lycos."
The Techdirt article referenced is on Heise Online:
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/53697
I'd be curious to hear what NANOG readers thoughts are on this.
Techdirt is located at http://www.techdirt.com/
- ferg
-- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg@netzero.net or fergdawg@sbcglobal.net