Good link, Dallas.

I'm surprised HP put the fact that they are being sued over 
this on their site.  I wonder if the programmer genius that
did that is still employed at HP.

So this poses a question: Assuming you need to determine
if you are currently connected to the Internet, how would 
you do it?  A gethostbyname() lookup is what I would
expect, not pinging someone's IP address.  

Moreover, what benefit is gained with this?  If is person 
has a dialup account, the "connected" icon will be in the 
system tray.  If they are on a LAN/DSL/Cable Modem, they 
will know if they are connected to the Internet.  I can't 
help but feel this programmer is a complete idiot, or he 
knew that several thousand computers pinging that one IP 
would be a great DDOS attack.

George



Dallas Helquist wrote:
> 
> It's a known "feature" of HP computers with multimedia keyboards.
> 
> http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,11866,0x515b1012aa92d5118ff100
> 90279cd0f9,00.html
> 
> Good luck.
> 
> -dallas
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Demland" <demland@cox.net>
> To: "PLUG Discuss" <plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
> Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 10:14 PM
> Subject: Outgoing ping unknown
> 
> > I just put a sniffer on my home network and I have found that my wife's
> > computer is sending out a ping to address: 207.26.131.137. I have ran a
> > virus checker on it and there are no known viruses. I have not been able
> to
> > find out where this IP goes to. Does anyone have an idea where this IP is
> > and what might be trying to "phone home"?
> >
> > Thank You,
> >
> > David
> >
> > ________________________________________________
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> post to the list quickly and you use Netscape to write mail.
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