constant IPv6 pinging

[Patrick W. Gilmore]

On Mar 01, 2013, at 15:12 , Daniel Roesen <dr at cluenet.de> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 01, 2013 at 10:37:36AM -0800, Matthew Luckie wrote:
>> Starting at Saturday noon PST (last weekend) something began constantly
>> pinging my HE tunnel:
>> 
>> http://www.caida.org/~mjl/gif0-week.png
>> http://www.caida.org/~mjl/gif0-ping.pcap
>> 
>> Does anyone have insight into who they are and what they are doing?
> 
> Looks like Akamai to me. Several of the IPs directly tracable to Akamai,
> and all using IPv4 address encoded in hex as their host part, which I
> seem to remember being an Akamai practice.
> 
> Are you running any web server with content on that IPv6 address?

I haven't checked the pcap, but if Daniel says it is Akamai, I believe him.  

We do ping things on the Internet, as well as doing lots of traceroutes.  Typically the targets are routers, not web servers, as we are trying to find paths.  Besides, as a content serving company, Akamai rarely talks to web servers anyway.

The rate is supposed to be low-grade.  There are protections in place to ensure no single IP address gets more than a few a minute and most people don't even notice.

If there is a specific address you do not want us to ping, please email NetSupport-tix at akamai.com.  That will open a ticket with our Network Support group, and they will put your address into the Do Not Ping list.

One Caveat: That will affect our ability to check connectivity to your prefixes, which may affect where and how we map your users.

-- 
TTFN,
patrick

P.S. Sorry if this has caused any issues.