Donna Garverick wrote:

> for some reason system <x> can't reach system <y> (and one of these
> systems is your mpe box).  your network engineer looks down his/her
> nose at you and sneers one of two things (or <eek> even both):
> 'what, you can't tracert?'  or 'obviously it's the mpe system....'.

Hey now, that sword cuts both ways.  Plenty of sysadmins, users, and
helpdesk personnel look down their nose at me and sneers "What's wrong
with the network" or "Are we having router problems"...

But I should also point out that failure to ping/traceroute does not
necessarily imply a failure.  Many sites these days are blocking ICMP
messages for security purposes (which kills ping for obvious reasons,
and traceroute because the ICMP unreachable replies are blocked).

So failure of ping/traceroute <> network problem.
Success of ping/traceroute = healthy network.

Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]> (wearing Network Admin hat)