From: Hank Nussbacher <hank@ibm.net.il> Subject: Re: syn attack and source routing

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On Wed, 18 Sep 1996 03:17:27 -0400 Curtis Villamizar wrote:

...

If source routing is blocked at the end site it doesn't help any toturn it off in the backbones and turning it off destroys the ability to trace routing problems that customers report (short of finger pointing to another provider or giving the customer the run around by successive handoffs to other NOCs debugging, any "I can't get there from here" is sort of hopeless if you can't traceroute -g).

Since more and more are blocking source routing and breaking traceroute -g then those that block it at their router should at the very least make a WWW traceroute available from their system so as to diagnose those problems you mention. Almost all those that I have in my web site (http://www.ibm.net.il/traceroute) are customers connected to major ISPs. I think the 10 majors should have on their backbones a WWW traceroute as above.

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?". -brett