In message <200212281343.gBSDh3C20036@jfwhome.funhouse.com>, "John F. Woods" wr
ites:
>Before I go off and implement this, I an wondering if anyone else has already
>done something like this:
>
>I have a small network at home with my NetBSD box acting as the PPP link to
>the outside world.  When client computers have problems reaching the Internet,
>I would like to have a little application on the clients (all Macs) which woul
>d
>be able to poll the NetBSD box to find out the status of pppd (link up, link
>questionable (i.e. failed an echo request), link down, etc).  I have pppd set
>to be persistent, so the server side can't just check to see if pppd is 
>running; and I'd like to be able to detect the "link questionable" state,
>so checking the results of "ifconfig ppp0" isn't really enough.
>
>So, my plan is to modify pppd to record current status of the connection in
>a file, which can be checked by some tiny server application.  Has anyone
>implemented anything like this, and/or does anyone else find it potentially
>useful?
>
>Thanks,
>John Woods
>jfw@funhouse.com
>
I think it would be very useful, even on a single machine.  But let me 
suggest that you try to make the data available via SNMP -- this would 
be a boon to people who use, say, mrtg to monitor their networks.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)