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The Story of the PING Program (1997)

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Re: The Story of the PING Program (1997)

#3
Am I the only one that finds the MS Windows ping more useful for quick troubleshooting that the Linux/Unix variants? A few weeks ago I was dealing poor performance on my cable modem. When I pinged a valid IP, I was seeing the successful packets only. It didn't show time-out packets until the summary displayed on exit. This makes it useless for quick real-time monitoring. MS ping on the other hand will show time-outs along with the successful ones.

Why is Linux ping this way? Is this a fundamental design flaw?

Re: The Story of the PING Program (1997)

#4
post #3

Am I the only one that finds the MS Windows ping more useful for quick troubleshooting that the Linux/Unix variants? A few weeks ago I was dealing poor performance on my cable modem. When I pinged a valid IP, I was seeing the successful packets only. It didn't show time-out packets until the summary displayed on exit. This makes it useless for quick real-time monitoring. MS ping on the other hand will show time-outs…

based on a quick perusal of the man page, the -O option will show something like "no answer yet for icmp_seq=19" when a packet doesn't get a response in time for the next one, and at least for me the default shows the icmp_seq which increases by one for each packet sent, but is only printed on each receipt (so you can spot missing ones).

Re: The Story of the PING Program (1997)

#6
post #3

Am I the only one that finds the MS Windows ping more useful for quick troubleshooting that the Linux/Unix variants? A few weeks ago I was dealing poor performance on my cable modem. When I pinged a valid IP, I was seeing the successful packets only. It didn't show time-out packets until the summary displayed on exit. This makes it useless for quick real-time monitoring. MS ping on the other hand will show time-outs…

'oping' fixes that issue:

  $ oping msn.com
  PING msn.com (23.101.196.141) 56 bytes of data.
  echo reply from msn.com (23.101.196.141): icmp_seq=1 timeout
  echo reply from msn.com (23.101.196.141): icmp_seq=2 timeout
  echo reply from msn.com (23.101.196.141): icmp_seq=3 timeout
Also, in standard ping, you can type Ctrl+\ (sends the QUIT signal) to get an update, e.g.

  $ ping msn.com
  PING msn.com (23.101.196.141) 56(84) bytes of data.
  >>
  7/0 packets, 100% loss

Re: The Story of the PING Program (1997)

#8
post #3

Am I the only one that finds the MS Windows ping more useful for quick troubleshooting that the Linux/Unix variants? A few weeks ago I was dealing poor performance on my cable modem. When I pinged a valid IP, I was seeing the successful packets only. It didn't show time-out packets until the summary displayed on exit. This makes it useless for quick real-time monitoring. MS ping on the other hand will show time-outs…

I use mtr nowadays. It's not ping but a traceroute that updates as it goes. I find it much more useful than a plain ping in most cases.
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