From: "Raymond D. Mereniuk" <Raymond@fbn.bc.ca>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 10:29:15 +0800
To: "Kevin J. Stephenson" <kevin.stephenson@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: Spot The Fed
In-Reply-To: <199809100428.VAA17926@leroy.fbn.bc.ca>
Message-ID: <199809101544.IAA18377@leroy.fbn.bc.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



"Kevin J. Stephenson" <kevin.stephenson@pobox.com> wrote

> A lot of companies that get Net access never setup the reverse DNS entries
> out of sheer laziness on their assigned class C, and their upstream
> provider doesn't care. Feds probably have Class A and B addresses anyways.

Traceroute doesn't use DNS, it doesn't need to as it already has the 
IP numbers.  DNS is a system which provides IP numbers when you 
give it a domain name.  Reverse DNS provides a host name to an IP 
address but Traceroute doesn't use it.

Traceroute works at the router level.  Traceroute is like Ping but 
provides information on every hop including IP number and 
assigned device name.  With Traceroute if a host name is not 
received, when requested of course, it is because the equipment 
was not assigned a host name or it is deliberately suppressed.  I 
don't use Traceroute a lot but this is the first time I have seen host 
names suppressed.  

A lot of routers have ICM suppressed and will not provide a device 
name.  If an end user site wants to provide better security they will 
turn off ICM packets.  At that point Traceroute doesn't work at all.




Virtually

Raymond D. Mereniuk
Raymond@fbn.bc.ca