From 650d202dbd09015223b019f70291e49b73c3a8ed Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Hajimu UMEMOTO Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 19:00:51 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] some reasoning why we separated ping(8) and ping6(8) comments/additions/corrections are welcome. Obtained from: KAME --- sbin/ping6/ping6.8 | 29 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 29 insertions(+) diff --git a/sbin/ping6/ping6.8 b/sbin/ping6/ping6.8 index 3baec345c502..6f8855d36268 100644 --- a/sbin/ping6/ping6.8 +++ b/sbin/ping6/ping6.8 @@ -407,6 +407,35 @@ and non-zero if the arguments are incorrect or the host is not responding. .%D October 22, 1999 .%O work in progress material .Re +.Sh BUGS +There have been many discussions on why we separate +.Xr ping6 8 +and +.Xr ping 8 . +Some people argued that it would be more convenient to uniform the +ping command for both IPv4 and IPv6. +The followings are an answer to the request. +.Pp +From a developer's point of view: +since the underling API is totally different between IPv4 and IPv6, +we would end up having two types of code base. +There would actually be less benefit to uniform the two commands +into a single command from the developer's standpoint. +.Pp +From an operator's point of view: unlike ordinary network applications +like remote login tools, we are usually aware of address family when using +network management tools. +We do not just want to know the reachability to the host, but want to know the +reachability to the host via a particular network protocol such as +IPv6. +Thus, even if we had a unified +.Xr ping 8 +command for both IPv4 and IPv6, we would usually type a +.Fl 6 +or +.Fl 4 +option (or something like those) to specify the particular address family. +This essentially means that we have two different commands. .Sh HISTORY The .Nm ping