In message <20050921014346.GS5285@renesys.com>, Todd Underwood writes:
this has probably already been thought-out, but outbound reachability testing *from* the address block to a representative spread of addressing makes much more sense and would be much more indicative of forwarding (versus routing) problems, and would do so with some method and statistical reliability. presumably that is coming and just hasn't been discussed or carried out yet.
It's a good idea, but of course that requires someone in the allocated block to have a list of addresses to ping, all over the net. Furthermore, the pinging really should be done from an actual use of the net, and not just from, say, the RIR that allocated the block. (Pinging a single address in new blocks would have that requirement, too, of course.) --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb