The internet still works without ICMP, until it doesn't. Worse, when it does fail you have no recourse because the network has accumulated a pile of hacks to ge

The internet still works without ICMP, until it doesn't. Worse, when it does fail you have no recourse because the network has accumulated a pile of hacks to get 99% of people's use cases working and network operators are not inclined to spend the energy to fix their networks just for you. And so you layer another hack onto the pile and move on, as does everyone else. Not only is the time spent layering hacks on hacks significant, the result is a network which is much less useful because only the most common usage patterns can be expected to work. Want to do something novel? Good luck. See also: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-thomson-postel-was-wrong-01 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-thomson-postel-was-wrong-0...