SUMMARY: Disabling ICMP netmask replies

From: Frank Peters (fwp@CC.MsState.Edu)
Date: Sun Nov 08 1992 - 00:24:23 CST


My original query:

: We have a rather large network with several Sun systems and PCs running
: PCNFS and Macs behind Kinetics Fastpaths. When these PCs and Macs boot
: and get their IP address they also broadcast an ICMP netmask query.
    [...]
: I've looked through the answerbook and have found no clues. Does
: anyone know if there is some kernel variable (similar to ipforwarding)
: which can be used to disable these replies? Or any other method?

Thanks to the several people who replied. The short answer is no,
there is no simple method of disabling ICMP Netmask replies on the
Suns. With source it would certainly be possible but people with
access tell me that even then it wouldn't be easy (and wouldn't be
portable to future releases and would be prone to be overwritten by bug
fixes anyway).

Several people pointed out that the PCNFS systems won't send the
queries if they have a netmask set with a line "net subnet 255.255.0.0"
in the network.bat file. I actually knew about this but this does
nothing to help the Mac situation (a bug in the fastpaths seems to
issue a netmask query even when a netmask is hardcoded into their
configuration). Fixing the Suns and the PCNFS systemw would hopefully
have made the situation a bearable one.

Thanks to the folowing:
     Hal Stern
     Elmar Kurgpold
     Perry Hutchison
     Mike Raffety
     Roger Waters
     aahvdl@eye.psych.umn.edu (I lost your name...sorry)



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