the ping thing came along I think because for a while, you could make connections and sending a bunch of stuff without bothering to read what was returned from

the ping thing came along I think because for a while, you could make connections and sending a bunch of stuff without bothering to read what was returned from the server, and I think the mechanisms at the time for dealing with these flooding connections was this ping thing so it required a fully functioning tcp connection instead of some wierd spoof halfway thing going on at the time. the text value of the ping at least has to be read and returned. thats how I remember it anyways.