On Feb 11, 2008, at 7:02 PM, Zach wrote:

> I've noticed with some netrek players you can't get certain
> information such as when you send @ to their slot it does not return a
> hostmask or ip, it just gives a blank line, the other case is when
> pinging someone (!) it will say that it could not ping them.
>
> I am curious exactly what is occuring on the player's end to cause
> these 2 behaviors? If they had a firewall it must be allowing UDP
> through.

If you send someone @ or !, it should always return SOMETHING unless  
the player is busted. I am fairly certain that it will block if the  
player is dead as well, until they are back in the game. If you can  
replicate a case of either one not working on a non-busted ship that  
is in the game, please let me know. I have never seen these commands  
fail, except on a busted ship, and be delayed on a dead ship until re- 
entry.

The "no ping stats available" output is caused by a client having ping  
stats disabled. (E.g. "dontPing: on" in your rc file, for BRMH at  
least.)

By the way, MacTrek doesn't even support UDP, and it isn't required  
for ping stats. If you ping a MacTrek player, you will see -1%/-1% for  
the loss, which means TCP-only.