Ping, reportedly an acronym for the Packet Internetwork Groper, is
one of the most widely available tools bundled with TCP/IP software
packages. Ping uses a series of Internet Control Message Protocol
(ICMP) [22] Echo messages to determine if a remote host is active or
inactive, and to determine the round-trip delay in communicating with
it.
A common form of the Ping command, showing some of the more commonly
available options that are of use to general users, is:
-q Quiet output; nothing is displayed except summary
lines at startup and completion
-v Verbose output, which lists ICMP packets that are
received in addition to Echo Responses
-R Record route option; includes the RECORD_ROUTE
option in the Echo Request packet and displays the route buffer
on returned packets
-c Count Specifies the number of Echo Requests to be sent
before concluding test (default is to run until interrupted
with a control-C)
-i Wait Indicates the number of seconds to wait between
sending each packet (default = 1)
-s PacketSize Specifies the number of data bytes to be sent;
the total ICMP packet size will be PacketSize+8 bytes due to
the ICMP header (default = 56, or a 64 byte packet)
Host IP address or host name of target system
In the first example below, the user pings the host
thumper.bellcore.com, requesting that 6 (-c) messages be sent, each
containing 64 bytes (-s) of user data. The display shows the round-
trip delay of each Echo message returned to the sending host; at the
end of the test, summary statistics are displayed.
In the second example, the user pings the host smcvax.smcvt.edu,
requesting that 10 messages be sent in quite mode (-q). In this case,
a summary is printed at the conclusion of the test and individual
responses are not listed.
TECHNICAL NOTE: Older versions of the Ping command, which are still
available on some systems, had the following general format:
In this form, the optional "-s" string tells the system to
continually send an ICMP Echo message every second; the optional
PacketSize parameter specifies the number of bytes in the Echo
message (the message will contain PacketSize-8 bytes of data; the
default is 56 bytes of data and a 64 byte message); and the optional
Count parameter indicates the number of Echo messages to send before
concluding the test (the default is to run the test continuously
until interrupted).
====================================================================
**syrup:/home$ ping -c 6 -s 64 thumper.bellcore.com
PING thumper.bellcore.com (128.96.41.1): 64 data bytes
72 bytes from 128.96.41.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=240 time=641.8 ms
72 bytes from 128.96.41.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=240 time=1072.7 ms
72 bytes from 128.96.41.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=240 time=1447.4 ms
72 bytes from 128.96.41.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=240 time=758.5 ms
72 bytes from 128.96.41.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=240 time=482.1 ms
--- thumper.bellcore.com ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 16% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 482.1/880.5/1447.4 ms