True purpose for parents definition

[Tony Spencer]

What is the true purpose for parent definitions within a hosts entry in
hosts.cfg?
I thought it served 2 purposes:
1. To be able to construct a true status map
2. If Nagios sees a host is down and it is a parent to other hosts it
will not notify about those hosts attached to the parent host.

I currently have a router that is showing as Critical state, the
check_host_alive check is failing with:

CRITICAL - Plugin timed out after 10 seconds 

Because it's fallen off the network for some reason.
Attached to this host are 2 other hosts that have the router that is
down specified as their parent host.
I am now receiving 3 notifications, one for each of the hosts with the
message above instead of just one for the parent host.

Am I wrong in my thinking and I have to setup dependencies to make my 2
attached hosts dependant upon the downed router?
If that is so then I'll have to put in a service check for the router,
such as a ping check?

Thanks in advance
Tony
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