Outgoing ping unknown

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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