Hello Samuel,
I am terribly sorry for my curiosity.
I try hard, but I sometimes fail to stop it :-)
I am Greek and perhaps my English is not very good, but I haven't managed
to find the word "Quence" (printed by your utility) even in dictionaries on the Internet.
You mean that the Unix machine has a ping utility with typos on messages ?
I have never achieved to quench a device by using unix ping utilities,
but perhaps I have never tried hard enough.
I think that usually there is a 1 second period between successive ICMP echo requets.
Can you confirm that your utility does that with some sniffer ?
If it does, then probably the quench was achieved because you probably
tried from many locations to hit the Device Under Test.
I remember seeing somewhere that cisco devices won't send a quench
back to the source beginning with some software versions and later.
I think this quench is deprecated.
Just curious (again!), but have you managed to get a quench response
from any of the cisco DUTs you have in your lab ?
Regarding the meaning of quench, usually this means some queue is full
and the device starts dropping packets.
If you are very persistent, you might push the system to its limits and crash it.
The crash could be initiated from software or hardware (watchdog),
but does it really matter ?
You probably do black-box testing with those other vendors devices.
Unless you are a developer and want to fix the device or extend the system limits.
Also have in mind that the packet size you use while testing
can have a significant effect on the test results.
Hitting devices with high-rate small packets from multiple locations
is not what I would say tender.
This way you are not simulating real traffic patterns.
Only perhaps DDoS can compare to this.
Of course, it can be useful to know how much evil
your DUTs can handle.
Maria
