Comment 13 for bug 1258361

This week I received an e-mail of someone who had his firefwall (accidentally) blocking ICMP packets. He suggested using a web request if ping fails. Web requests are undoubtedly be slower than pings, but then they are *only* required if ping fails.

While implementing this two-step solution I also stumbled upon netcat. This is a tool that is able to open ports to remote hosts. It's as fast as ping and might not be blocked (altough I'm not sure what kind of packets it sends).

So I ultimately ended up building a three-step solution:
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ztefn/haguichi/1.0/revision/376

If you would like to give it a test, here's a freshly build debian package:
http://www.haguichi.net/build/haguichi_1.0.22rev376-clr4.0_all.deb

I'm anxious to hear if it works and if it succeeds at step two (netcat) or only at step three (web request).