I was thinking of a DoS-type attack on the local eth0 (as opposed to lo) with that loop. Perhaps a multi-threaded ping (ICMP) flood? I see that the version of Perl included with an Oracle 10gR2 install seems to include threading capabilities (didn't test it) as well as Net::Ping. A quick Google shows this might be a good starting place for that approach: http://www.perlmonks.org/?node=392426 If I had a segregated network, I'd love to try this theory. As I don't and I also value my current employment status, I'm not going to test it. GL! Rich > does writing a tight cpu expensive loop in C do it for you? I'd expect it to > :) > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l