Please help? Avoiding bad routers? Possible?

[Stephen Moore]

There are a number of Internet servers I must connect to, but there are is a
collection of bad routers along the way that are making it really difficult.
The most usual case is a large jump in ping and packet loss, which is
manageable, but the most important servers cannot be reached at all
("Destination host unreachable"). I know the servers are up and running
well.

I have heard there is some software out there that can be used to specify
alternate routes to hosts. Networking experts I have spoken to have used
the software but cannot remember what it was called. Can anyone tell me
what this is and what it does?

Also, I would like to know HOW such software accomplishes what it does.
What protocols are involved in specifying alternate routes, for example?

Any help greatly appreciated.

[Barry Margolin]

In article <jXne2.803$aG5...@news.rdc1.bc.wave.home.com>,

The only thing I can think of is that they make use of one of the Source
Routing options in the IP header, which allows the sender to specify a
certain set of routers that the packet should go through. However, it's
generally up to the application to set this option, and very few
applications do; most Unix traceroute implementations have it, maybe some
pings, and I think I've seen it in some telnets. I haven't heard of doing
it with software separate from the application itself, although if you have
cooperation from a remote site that can access the problem destinations you
might be able to do it with tunneling.

Source routing is not very effective, as many sites have their routers
configured to block packets with this option, for security reasons.

--
Barry Margolin, bar...@bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
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