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Subject: Re: Merge ping+ping6 and traceroue+traceroute6 to single utilities?
From: Tom Pusateri <pusateri@bangj.com>
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Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014 08:14:18 -0500
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References: <1063008459.20140111160525@serebryakov.spb.ru>
 <52D14140.3090003@gibfest.dk>
To: Thomas Steen Rasmussen <thomas@gibfest.dk>
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On Jan 11, 2014, at 8:04 AM, Thomas Steen Rasmussen <thomas@gibfest.dk> =
wrote:

> On 11-01-2014 13:05, Lev Serebryakov wrote:
>> Hello, Net.
>>=20
>>   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.
>>=20
> Hello,
>=20
> I hope not, these should remain seperate, allow me to explain:
>=20
> 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.
>=20
> 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.
>=20
> 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.
>=20
>=20
> Make sense ?
>=20
>=20
> Best regards
>=20
> Thomas Steen Rasmussen

I believe it does make sense to merge ping6 functionality into ping. You =
don't have to stop shipping a ping6 command for those who are used to =
it. But there's little difference between ping6 and 'ping -6' in my =
opinion. The trickier part is at what point do you transition the =
default from 'ping -4' to 'ping -6'. But that doesn't have to happen =
right away.

Tom