I stand corrected.. i should have said "udp length" rather than header length. I was under the impression that this had to be multiples of long words also. Nonetheless... what is the need for any data in this packet? Traceroute uses incrementing to assure that the return packets can be effectively ID'd, right? If nothing else, this anomoly might be useful in identifying certain router types that consider this to be a mal-formed packet. JMcLaren - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-net" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html