Merge ping+ping6 and traceroue+traceroute6 to single utilities?

[Jason Hellenthal]

If you don't mind me saying... That is utter BS without the D.

Doing it right and merging these two would leave for more constructive use.
Nobody is saying that it really needs to perform v6 & v4 without
interaction in the form of the user adding a switch and there is no reason
that by default it could not just default to using 4 only leaving room for
a later point to just switch its default to v6 when that time comes and
calls for it.

Secondly just because they would be merged does not mean there won't or
can't be a convention of detecting how the program was called. Symlink ping
to ping6 for interchangeability sake and the same could be done whenever
the default for ping would change to v6 by Symlinking ping to ping4.

And there is no reason why ping could not just do both and you as the
operator pick up the tab and just learn to call ping4 when you need to.

Quite frankly I am tired of seeing the old pessimism and paradigms that
projects keep falling into over silly little subtle changes.

ping localhost ("grab any name, you just want to know its alive")
ping 127.0.0.1 ("you know you are pinging v4 without a doubt")
ping ::1 ("you also know you are pinging v6 without a doubt")

ping -4 localhost ("you know you are getting v4 without a doubt")
ping -6 localhost ("you know you are getting v6 without a doubt")

ping -4 ::1 ("must be retarded in some way")

There is no reason whatsoever that these utilities cannot be combined. And
there is one very valid reason they should be.

Maybe someone should call fyodor and ask him to make a nmap6 and a nping6
to follow convention while the rest of the platforms work on combining.



On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 9:13 AM, Thomas Steen Rasmussen
<thomas at gibfest.dk>wrote:

> On 11-01-2014 14:36, sthaug at nethelp.no wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>>
>> I strongly disagree with the "almost always want a specific address
>> family". I normally want to verify that the IP at the other end is
>> alive, or get some idea of how to get there. If I want a specific
>> address family I'm very happy to use -4 / -6 options.
>>
>
> The IP at the other end will, by definition, always be either v4 or v6,
> so yes, you do want a specific address family - namely the family your
> IP belongs to.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Thomas Steen Rasmussen
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-net at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-net
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-net-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>