[UPHPU] access server in Utah from Singapore

[Smith, Jeff]

-----Original Message-----
From: uphpu-bounces at uphpu.org [mailto:uphpu-bounces at uphpu.org] On Behalf
Of Brandon Stout
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 12:14 PM
To: Daniel C.
Cc: UPHPU General Discussion
Subject: Re: [UPHPU] access server in Utah from Singapore

Daniel is right.  They *should* not.  Unfortunately, *should* does not
mean *do*.  As usual, we can use Microsoft as an example for not
following. Run:

  traceroute msn.com

Of course, msn is not the only one. On 2007-01-18 (it can change any
time), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traceroute said:

> Supplying such detailed information about the pathways taken was
> considered acceptable and convenient in the early days of the
> Internet, but later was considered questionable for privacy and
> security reasons. Traceroute information has been frequently used by
> hackers <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker> as a way to acquire
> sensitive information about a company's network architecture. By using
> the traceroute command, a hacker or several hackers can quickly map
> out what nodes are available on a company's network architecture and
> exploit vulnerable or compromised nodes/computers.
>
> For these reasons, while traceroute was widely used during the early
> days of Internet <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet>, by the 1990s
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s> the vast majority of sites on the
> internet no longer offered the service.
>

Brandon Stout
http://mscis.org

_______________________________________________

I usually lurk in this list because PHP is more of a hobby then a
profession to me but networking is my bread and butter.  Tracert is a
great tool for diagnosing connectivity issues.  Your backbone/carrier
routers will not block ICMP traffic.  You will only see ICMP traffic
being filtered at network borders.  It is usually filtered at the border
routers for security purposes.  In your example you could eliminate your
ISP and the network carriers as the problem because the route is clean
up to MSN.  You wouldn't be able to fix any problems in the MSN network
so what good does it do you to know anything beyond the border.  

Jeff Smith