🚀 go-pugleaf

Derek Scott (derek@teri-odin.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: On Sat, 1 Mar 1997 18:26:42 +0000, Chris Lawrence
: <chris@spacetime.demon.co.uk> wrote:

: Hi,

: >>A friend of mine suggested me to use a ping program in order to monitor
: >>all WWW connections.
: >
: >Pinging a site just times the flow of a little packet of data to that
: >site and back again.  It gives an idea of how slow the route is, and
: >whether or not the site is actually responding (or even there).

: If the site "isn't there" surely the ping will time out?

Ping cannot time-out, for example on RFC1149 links, the RTT may be up
to several days. Even worse, in inclement weather.
I've personally seen 20 second pings, with 100% packets
getting through.


: WS_Ping is a nice utulity that will not only ping a site but
: TRACE-ROUTE it too, listing the time taken from one stage in the
: packet's journey to the next router.

Strictly, it can't do this, it can only time how long packets from
each router take to return to you.
This may also be affected by other factors, such as some routers
will drop the ICMP packets used for this, or at least slow them.

: WS_Ping also sends 10 messages when Ping-ing which not only allows
: averaging of the response time but also shows up where packets are
: being *lost* which may not be apparent on a single packet ping test.

It shows when packets have not arrived, they may indeed be lost, or
may just be delayed.


: Cheers,
: Derek

--
Ian Stirling.                     Currently designing a new PDA, see homepage.
Homepage:                         http://www.mauve.demon.co.uk/
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