Spoofing
A technique used to reduce network overhead, especially in
wide area networks (WAN).
Some network
protocols send frequent packets for management purposes.
These can be
routing updates or keep-alive messages.
In a
WAN this can introduce significant overhead, due to the typically smaller
bandwidth of WAN connections.
Spoofing reduces the required bandwidth by having devices, such as
bridges or
routers, answer for the remote devices. This fools (spoofs) the
LAN device into thinking the remote LAN is still connected, even though it's not.
The spoofing saves the WAN bandwidth, because no packet is ever sent out on the WAN.
LAN
protocols today do not yet accommodate spoofing easily.
["Network Spoofing" by Jeffrey Fritz, BYTE, December 1994, pages 221 - 224].
