Hi,
We are seeing a number of hosts on a regular basis that "ping" their DNS server. These are users who are not even aware how to use ping, and from what I can tell Windows XP is pinging on its own. I assume that Windows XP does this as a verification that the DNS server is alive.
I see this in firewall logs, because these hosts are using Google public DNS which is setup in advanced settings of their NICs. The traffic crosses the firewall cause public DNS for Google is outside the scope of the LAN (obviously). While I can remove these entries without any issue (we obviously use internal DNS as a primary), I am concerned and want to verify that Windows XP is sending PINGS out our network on an automated basis.
I found nothing about this via Google. And it appears to be isolated to Windows XP, not Windows 7 (testing now).