this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 73 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

UDP seems more like a ball fired from canon to me. You may not be prepared for it and you won't know what state it's in when it gets here, but that packet is making it to the gate no matter what. Or, in the rare case it doesn't, it means someone else is having a real bad time.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago (2 children)

You forgot to mention that you might get it twice, or thrice, or more, and in different versions.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago

You're right. I forgot that grapeshot is always something to worry about.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

(novice) Why would you get UDP packets multiple times? UDP doesn't check for acceptance I thought.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (3 children)

From StackOverflow:

Switches will send packets to all interfaces when using broadcasts or under extreme conditions (full MAC Address Table). This can lead to duplication if there is a loop between two or more switches and if the Spanning Tree Protocol is not used. So the answer is rarely.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9196791/duplicate-udp-packets-how-often-it-happens#9220574

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

If you have no RSTP/MSTP you're just asking for trouble.

Switching loops are unlikely unless you have bad or non-existent documentation or someone new.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Fun story. I was tasked with figuring out a connection problem on a client's network. STP was enabled, but everyone having problems were all connected to one switch.

Some investigation later and STP's root port is not the expected root port....

After some investigation, a user took the ethernet cable for their computer (Daisy chained off their VoIP phone), and decided to store it, in the wall jack.... Across the office.

That was Jack was on a different switch, and it had a lower port cost than the primary root port between the switches, so naturally, let's send all inter-switch traffic over to this..... Telephone.

/Facepalm

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The only switching hardware they should have physical access to is a dumb switch if absolutely needed. Then control the cables.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yep. That happened once. The user plugged the cable for their laptop, from the dumb switch, into the same dumb switch and took out most of the network.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Don’t the big internet-y routers also send packets to multiple interfaces if they don’t know how to correctly handle the target IP address?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

No clue. My college course wasn’t all that deep, and it’s been quite some time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That is extraordinarily rare and I'm not even sure if it's possible anymore. That was potential attack vector in the 90's where you have a port on network switch, and then you flood the cam table with thousands of bogus mac addresses until you fill it up, then the switch turns into a hub, and you can now sniff all traffic traversing the switch. These days I'm not sure what will happen if you do successfully fill up a switches cam table. Also cam table sizes are are much much larger now. ~128k entry's vs maybe 1000 back in the day.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You can bring a surprisingly large number of network segments down just by plugging both ends of the same cable into a dumb switch. It probably won't happen immediately, but eventually you will get a broadcast storm which will propagate until it hits an element smart enough to snuff it out.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Protocols using UDP often dial in some features of TCP at the application layer, and resend packets as needed.

The meme is funny and all, but real world use of UDP is pretty sophisticated.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sorry I didn't get this UDP joke...

[–] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago

Well I ain't just gonna repeat it...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Just keep tossing packages over a tall fence, say "I guess that'll do it", then shrug and walk away.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Because you're so prepared for a guy kicking a parcel over the fence. It's the same analogy my dude.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

The kick over the fence means they took enough care to carry it as far as your fence. UDP lobs it from one town over.