ping .. pong
ping [from the submariners' term for a sonar pulse]
1. n. Slang term for a small network message (ICMP ECHO) sent by a computer to check for the presence and alertness of another. The Unix command ping(8) can be used to do this manually (note that ping(8)'s author denies the widespread folk etymology that the name was ever intended as acronym for `Packet INternet Groper'). Occasionally used as a phone greeting. See ACK, also ENQ.
2. vt. To verify the presence of.
3. vt. To get the attention of.
4. vt. To send a message to all members of a mailing list requesting an ACK (in order to verify that everybody's addresses are reachable). "We haven't heard much of anything from Geoff, but he did respond with an ACK both times I pinged jargon-friends."
5. n. A quantum packet of happiness. People who are very happy tend to exude pings; furthermore, one can intentionally create pings and aim them at a needy party (e.g., a depressed person). This sense of ping may appear as an exclamation; "Ping!" (I'm happy; I am emitting a quantum of happiness; I have been struck by a quantum of happiness). The form "pingfulness", which is used to describe people who exude pings, also occurs. (In the standard abuse of language, "pingfulness" can also be used as an exclamation, in which case it's a much stronger exclamation than just "ping"!). Oppose blargh.
man ping
SYNOPSIS
ping [ -LRUbdfnqrvVaA] [ -c count] [ -i interval] [ -l
preload] [ -p pattern] [ -s packetsize] [ -t ttl] [ -w
deadline] [ -F flowlabel] [ -I interface] [ -M hint] [
-Q tos] [ -S sndbuf] [ -T timestamp option] [ hop ...]
destination
DESCRIPTION
ping uses the ICMP protocol's mandatory ECHO_REQUEST data-
gram to elicit an ICMP ECHO_RESPONSE from a host or gate-
way. ECHO_REQUEST datagrams (``pings) have an IP and
ICMP header, followed by a struct timeval and then an
arbitrary number of ``pad bytes used to fill out the
packet.
OPTIONS
-a Audible ping.
-A Adaptive ping. Interpacket interval adapts to
round-trip time, so that effectively not more than
one (or more, if preload is set) unanswered probes
present in the network. Minimal interval is 200msec
for not super-user. On networks with low rtt this
mode is essentially equivalent to flood mode.
-b Allow pinging a broadcast address.
-c count
Stop after sending count ECHO_REQUEST packets. With
deadline option, ping waits for count ECHO_REPLY
packets, until the timeout expires.
-d Set the SO_DEBUG option on the socket being used.
Essentially, this socket option is not used by
Linux kernel.
-F flow label
Allocate and set 20 bit flow label on echo request
packets. (Only ping6). If value is zero, kernel
allocates random flow label.
-f Flood ping. For every ECHO_REQUEST sent a period
``. is printed, while for ever ECHO_REPLY
received a backspace is printed. This provides a
rapid display of how many packets are being
dropped. If interval is not given, it sets inter-
val to zero and outputs packets as fast as they
come back or one hundred times per second,
whichever is more. Only the super-user may use
this option with zero interval.
If preload is specified, ping sends that many pack-
ets not waiting for reply. Only the super-user may
select preload more than 3.
-L Suppress loopback of multicast packets. This flag
only applies if the ping destination is a multicast
address.
-n Numeric output only. No attempt will be made to
lookup symbolic names for host addresses.
-p pattern
You may specify up to 16 ``pad bytes to fill out
the packet you send. This is useful for diagnosing
data-dependent problems in a network. For example,
-p ff will cause the sent packet to be filled with
all ones.
-Q tos Set Quality of Service -related bits in ICMP data-
grams. tos can be either decimal or hex number.
Traditionally (RFC1349), these have been inter-
preted as: 0 for reserved (currently being rede-
fined as congestion control), 1-4 for Type of Ser-
vice and 5-7 for Precedence. Possible settings for
Type of Service are: minimal cost: 0x02, reliabil-
ity: 0x04, throughput: 0x08, low delay: 0x10. Mul-
tiple TOS bits should not be set simultaneously.
Possible settings for special Precedence range from
priority (0x20) to net control (0xe0). You must be
root (CAP_NET_ADMIN capability) to use Critical or
higher precedence value. You cannot set bit 0x01
(reserved) unless ECN has been enabled in the ker-
nel. In RFC2474, these fields has been redefined
as 8-bit Differentiated Services (DS), consisting
of: bits 0-1 of separate data (ECN will be used,
here), and bits 2-7 of Differentiated Services
Codepoint (DSCP).
-q Quiet output. Nothing is displayed except the sum-
mary lines at startup time and when finished.
-R Record route. Includes the RECORD_ROUTE option in
the ECHO_REQUEST packet and displays the route
buffer on returned packets. Note that the IP
header is only large enough for nine such routes.
Many hosts ignore or discard this option.
-r Bypass the normal routing tables and send directly
to a host on an attached interface. If the host is
not on a directly-attached network, an error is
returned. This option can be used to ping a local
host through an interface that has no route through
-T timestamp option
Set special IP timestamp options. timestamp option
may be either tsonly (only timestamps), tsandaddr
(timestamps and addresses) or tsprespec host1
[host2 [host3 [host4]]] (timestamp prespecified
hops).
-M hint
Select Path MTU Discovery strategy. hint may be
either do (prohibit fragmentation, even local one),
want (do PMTU discovery, fragment locally when
packet size is large), or dont (do not set DF
flag).
-U Print full user-to-user latency (the old
behaviour). Normally ping prints network round trip
time, which can be different f.e. due to DNS fail-
ures.
-v Verbose output.
-V Show version and exit.
-w deadline
Specify a timeout, in seconds, before ping exits
regardless of how many packets have been sent or
received. In this case ping does not stop after
count packet are sent, it waits either for deadline
expire or until count probes are answered or for
some error notification from network.
When using ping for fault isolation, it should first be
run on the local host, to verify that the local network
interface is up and running. Then, hosts and gateways fur-
ther and further away should be ``pinged. Round-trip
times and packet loss statistics are computed. If dupli-
cate packets are received, they are not included in the
packet loss calculation, although the round trip time of
these packets is used in calculating the minimum/aver-
age/maximum round-trip time numbers. When the specified
number of packets have been sent (and received) or if the
program is terminated with a SIGINT, a brief summary is
displayed. Shorter current statistics can be obtained
without termination of process with signal SIGQUIT.
If ping does not receive any reply packets at all it will
exit with code 1. If a packet count and deadline are both
specified, and fewer than count packets are received by
the time the deadline has arrived, it will also exit with
code 1. On other error it exits with code 2. Otherwise it
exits with code 0. This makes it possible to use the exit
code to see if a host is alive or not.
requested data space (the ICMP header).
If the data space is at least of size of struct timeval
ping uses the beginning bytes of this space to include a
timestamp which it uses in the computation of round trip
times. If the data space is shorter, no round trip times
are given.
DUPLICATE AND DAMAGED PACKETS
ping will report duplicate and damaged packets. Duplicate
packets should never occur, and seem to be caused by inap-
propriate link-level retransmissions. Duplicates may
occur in many situations and are rarely (if ever) a good
sign, although the presence of low levels of duplicates
may not always be cause for alarm.
Damaged packets are obviously serious cause for alarm and
often indicate broken hardware somewhere in the ping
packet's path (in the network or in the hosts).
TRYING DIFFERENT DATA PATTERNS
The (inter)network layer should never treat packets dif-
ferently depending on the data contained in the data por-
tion. Unfortunately, data-dependent problems have been
known to sneak into networks and remain undetected for
long periods of time. In many cases the particular pat-
tern that will have problems is something that doesn't
have sufficient ``transitions, such as all ones or all
zeros, or a pattern right at the edge, such as almost all
zeros. It isn't necessarily enough to specify a data pat-
tern of all zeros (for example) on the command line
because the pattern that is of interest is at the data
link level, and the relationship between what you type and
what the controllers transmit can be complicated.
This means that if you have a data-dependent problem you
will probably have to do a lot of testing to find it. If
you are lucky, you may manage to find a file that either
can't be sent across your network or that takes much
longer to transfer than other similar length files. You
can then examine this file for repeated patterns that you
can test using the -p option of ping.
TTL DETAILS
The TTL value of an IP packet represents the maximum num-
ber of IP routers that the packet can go through before
being thrown away. In current practice you can expect
each router in the Internet to decrement the TTL field by
exactly one.
The TCP/IP specification states that the TTL field for TCP
packets should be set to 60, but many systems use smaller
value in the received packet will be 255 minus the num-
ber of routers in the round-trip path.
o Set it to 255; this is what current Berkeley Unix sys-
tems do. In this case the TTL value in the received
packet will be 255 minus the number of routers in the
path from the remote system to the pinging host.
o Set it to some other value. Some machines use the same
value for ICMP packets that they use for TCP packets,
for example either 30 or 60. Others may use completely
wild values.
BUGS
o Many Hosts and Gateways ignore the RECORD_ROUTE option.
o The maximum IP header length is too small for options
like RECORD_ROUTE to be completely useful. There's not
much that that can be done about this, however.
o Flood pinging is not recommended in general, and flood
pinging the broadcast address should only be done under
very controlled conditions.
SEE ALSO
netstat(1), ifconfig(8).
HISTORY
The ping command appeared in 4.3BSD.
The version described here is its descendant specific to
Linux.
SECURITY
ping requires CAP_NET_RAWIO capability to be executed. It
may be used as set-uid root.
AVAILABILITY
ping is part of iputils package and the latest versions
are available in source form for anonymous ftp
ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/iputils-current.tar.gz.
External Links[edit]
The Story of the PING Program
Source code of PING: