From owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 11 13:04:06 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: net@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 033A1155; Sat, 11 Jan 2014 13:04:06 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.tyknet.dk (mail.tyknet.dk [IPv6:2a01:4f8:201:2327:144:76:253:226]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-CAMELLIA256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id B5A7B11AD; Sat, 11 Jan 2014 13:04:05 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [10.10.1.214] (217.71.4.82.static.router4.bolignet.dk [217.71.4.82]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mail.tyknet.dk (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id C910918733E; Sat, 11 Jan 2014 13:04:03 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Filter: OpenDKIM Filter v2.8.3 mail.tyknet.dk C910918733E DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=simple/simple; d=gibfest.dk; s=default; t=1389445443; bh=UJvEDyDIlCjvoGZ6catqZ0xXwAyT3TQNufKZNiXSKXI=; h=Date:From:To:CC:Subject:References:In-Reply-To; b=ozguOUN7tsahSC2gVIfLjefyvSw5/3nATCO+zTwAOSyWcqwwHNjYlNFIJQlS6X3dO AOjZTy4AovMFI28f1r7ffZhbZw9iso5fzcUeS5zEpqYZqM8p68/7ntGFoyhtyTwXqo oYdTRuK8mFzcynJYeFR3cJMiMtoXkp6ny4fYEaLw= Message-ID: <52D14140.3090003@gibfest.dk> Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014 14:04:00 +0100 From: Thomas Steen Rasmussen User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.2.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lev@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Merge ping+ping6 and traceroue+traceroute6 to single utilities? References: <1063008459.20140111160525@serebryakov.spb.ru> In-Reply-To: <1063008459.20140111160525@serebryakov.spb.ru> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: net@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-net@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list List-Id: Networking and TCP/IP with FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014 13:04:06 -0000 On 11-01-2014 13:05, Lev Serebryakov wrote: > Hello, Net. > > Is here any project to merge ping/ping6 into ping and > traceroute/traceroute6 into treaceroute? As IPv6 becomes more common these > days, it is very inconvenient to have these utilities separated. > Hello, I hope not, these should remain seperate, allow me to explain: There is a good reason these utilities are seperated into v4 and v6 specific versions, while other tools support both. The reason is that ping and traceroute are network troubleshooting utilities that are only used for verifying/testing network connectivity. When testing network connectivity you are usually thinking about a specific protocol. Having seperate versions of the tools removes the ambiguity for hostnames with both A and AAAA records. If you want to test v4, use ping, if you want to test v6, use ping6. Normal network enabled utilities like telnet or ftp or nc support both because when using those you usually don't care about the address family used, you just want to connect. This is a significant difference from using ping or traceroute where you almost always want a specific address family, depending on what you are testing. Make sense ? Best regards Thomas Steen Rasmussen