ftp betwenn solaris and HP with a ping

[mornet]

Hello,
every day runs an automatic FTP script (with a .netrc) between a Soalris 5.7 and some HP-UX 11.00 Servers. In the firewall logs i saw that for each ftp connexion there is a ICMP request from the HP servers to the solaris server, and a ICMP reply from solaris to the HP. is it normal?
is it a ftp service configuration problem on the HP ?
Thanks for all
Thomas.

[Stefan Farrelly]

According to the TCP/IP protocol architecture diagram FTP is at the application layer (top) and IP/ICMP is lower down at the IP Services layer, which means all ftp requests must generate ICMP requests (by nature). This is by design.

[mornet]

Thanks for your answer. I agree with you but when i do the same between two solaris, i'dont see the ICP request/ Reply (when i do a snoop).

[Stefan Farrelly · Accepted solution]

Solaris has a completely different implementation of its TCP stack than HP. Often HP administrators complain about the lack of configurability of TCP on HP-UX, but apparantly on Sun you can change almost anything with TCP. Perhaps one of your Sun administrators (past or present) has switched off ICMP echo (or something similar) on your Sun ?