Ping (command)

ping command is available in almost all operating systems. The command-line options of the ping utility and its output vary between the numerous implementations. Options may include among others:

• Count of tests: (-c) (Linux and macOS), (-n Windows)
• Size of the payload
• Limits for the number of network hops (TTL) that probes traverse

Timing options:

• Timeout for exiting: -t (macOS), Linux not implemented.
• Interval between the requests
• Time to wait for a response (-W) miliseconds for macOS and seconds for Linux

Output format:

• Include timestamp on each line: Linux (-D)

Linux

$ ping -c 5 www.example.com
PING www.example.com (93.184.216.34): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 93.184.216.34: icmp_seq=0 ttl=56 time=11.632 ms
64 bytes from 93.184.216.34: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=11.726 ms
64 bytes from 93.184.216.34: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=10.683 ms
64 bytes from 93.184.216.34: icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=9.674 ms
64 bytes from 93.184.216.34: icmp_seq=4 ttl=56 time=11.127 ms

--- www.example.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 9.674/10.968/11.726/0.748 ms

Activities

Advanced

1. Review source code of different ping implementation:

Linux: https://github.com/iputils/iputils/blob/master/ping.c

BSD: https://sourceforge.net/p/iputils/code/ci/HEAD/tree/ping.c

macOS: https://opensource.apple.com/source/network_cmds/network_cmds-511/ping.tproj/ping.c.auto.html

• Use nmap for ping a full subnet: nmap -sn 192.168.0.*

See also

• broadcast address
• ping, nping, arping, fping, gping, hping, mtr, traceroute, tcptraceroute , tracepath, Test-Connection Powershell cmdlet, iperf, Ping (PAN-OS), BWPing, check_ping, ping -M, ios ping, ping -a
• TCP/IP, Transport protocol, UDP, SCTP, QUIC, subnet mask, Routing protocols: BGP, routing table, Policy based routing, multicast, TCP Fast Open, RDP, TTL, RTT, MPTCP, Large send offload (LSO): (TSO, GRO, GSO, TCP checksum), ethtool, SCTP, 5-Tuple, Check TCP connectivity, TCP window size, /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_rmem, ack, List of TCP ports, localhost, broadcast address

https://linux.die.net/man/8/ping