read my message again, john. i said i don't like the prospect of removing lsrr. i use it. i hate running across backbones that have it disabled. i wasn't campaigning to remove it. i was asking how dangerous it could be because i honestly didn't know. i didn't mean to alarm anyone or imply that i would be turning off lsrr. :) -brett

From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@bbnplanet.com> Subject: Re: syn attack and source routing

Return-Path: <jhawk@bbnplanet.com> In-Reply-To: <199609181640.JAA01450@batcave.genuity.net> from "Brett D. Watson" *** at Sep 18, 96 09:40:02 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

...

i should have been more specific. i don't like the idea (at all) of breaking traceroute -g either. i guess in a more general sense i should ask "just how dangerous *is* having backbone-wide/internet-wide loose source routing enabled?".

As Curtis explained, "not very".

Worst case, those folks feeling victimized can (and do!) simply shut it off.

This is a very different case from that of SYN flooding, where the victims are powerless to stop it.

Please don't take our LSRR away from us, it is very useful. Campaigning to remove something just because you suspect it might be bad is really not nice -- it will result in random clueless people believeing you when perchance they should not :-)

--jhawk