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The Ping Page - Information About The Ping Utility
Visit our online store at CafePress for items with the PING 127.0.0.1 Computer Services logo!
The Ping Page
Researched and Produced by PING 127.0.0.1 Computer
Services New York City, NY, USA Updated March, 2007
Thank you for visiting The Ping Page! Below you can find a wealth of
information regarding the Ping utility. Distributed under The GNU GPL
First of all, what exactly is Ping? In the course of doing research, it has
been found that it has taken on several distinct meanings. One is that Ping is
actually an acronym for the words 'Packet INternet Groper'. Another is that it
is in fact not an acronym at all, but a noun that was adopted from a verb that
the US Navy that uses to describe what its submarines do when looking for
objects under the sea. Their subs send out sonar waves and then wait for a
return wave when it bounces off something, such as another sub, whale, ocean
floor etc. This, in turn, was adopted from bats and dolphins, who navigate in
roughly the same way. This is what a system administrator does when Ping is
used. As such, Ping has also evolved into a verb in the computer industry, and
it is used in somewhat the same manner of the Navy. (more detail below)
The Ping utility is essentially a system administrator's tool that is used
to see if a computer is operating and also to see if network connections are
intact. Ping uses the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Echo function
which is detailed in RFC 792.
A small packet is sent through the network to a particular IP address. This
packet contains 64 bytes - 56 data bytes and 8 bytes of protocol reader information.
The computer that sent the packet then waits (or 'listens') for a return packet.
If the connections are good and the target computer is up, a good return packet will
be received. PING can also tell the user the number of hops that lie between two
computers and the amount of time it takes for a packet to make the complete trip.
Additionaly, an administrator can use Ping to test out name resolution. If the
packet bounces back when sent to the IP address but not when sent to the name, then
the system is having a problem matching the name to the IP address. As mentioned
previously, Ping has also evloved from a noun/acronym into a verb, for example:
"Ping server X to see if it is up" The time it takes for the packet to get to the
target computer and back again is known as the round trip time. If this takes an
extended period of time, it is indicative that something may be wrong. (Sources:
Netlingo site, Windows NT Help Menu,
Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia site,
Brown Computer Solutions site,
Guide to Practical Linux by Mark G. Sobell,
FreeBSD Ping Manpage)
If you are looking for an even more detailed explanation of Ping and also how
to use it in detecting network problems, goto Heavy Ping Detail. Here is
a sample ping packet
decode
Ping was created by Mike Muuss (pronounced "moose") of the Army Research Labortory
in Decmeber of 1983 in about a day in response to network difficulties he encountered.
To read the full story of the Ping program, click
The History of Ping.
To learn more about the brilliant inventor of Ping, clink the
Inventor of Ping.
It is worthy to note that Ping is a part of all Linux distributions, FreeBSD, NetBSD,
OpenBSD, Solaris, all Unix variants and Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP operating systems -
making the program pretty much distributed all over the planet. This is fantastic
accomplishment on Mike's part by any standard.
Mike died in a car accident on Interstate 95 near Havre de Grace, Maryland, USA at
about 11 PM on Monday, November 20, 2000 at the age of 42. Mike accomplished much in
his short life, but he will be best remembered for coding and giving away the source to ping.
Read Mike Muuss' obituary from The Baltimore Sun, November 25.
He serves as a lesson to all of us in the computer community that you are remembered not
for how much you make, but how much you give away. Thank you Mike, for leaving a bit of
yourself behind to help us in our computing journeys; we are going to miss you.
Looking for the source code for the first Ping program? Click the Ping Source Code (shell archive).
Here is the source code on in html format
Ping Source code (html format)
For complete details on the options available with ping, please go to the FreeBSD
Ping manual page. FreeBSD also has a Ping command that uses the ICMP6
ECHO_REQUEST datagram (as opposed to standard ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packets) that is
called Ping6.
Also, here is the Linux
Ping manpage. In both FreeBSD and Linux, Ping is in Section 8 of the
manpages. Here are the manpages for additional operating systems:
NetBSD,
OpenBSD and
Plan 9 from Bell Labs
Since the first Ping program, there have been several additions and
enhancements on the basic utility. One of the more fun ones is a utility where
an administrator can Ping up to four Internet sites at once. Goto the Multiple Ping Gateway.
If you want to set up your site to be a Ping Gateway, feel free to copy the
source code from Ping Gateway
Source Code so that you can install it.
3 very cool utilities are at the sites PingMePlease,
Ping2Me.com
and
Just Ping
where one can have
their computer pinged from a remote site via a web browser.
Of course, there are those who use something good and turn it into something
bad: The Ping of Death - ouch
The Ping Of Death essentially crashes a system by sending a Ping packet that
is larger than 65,536 bytes; the default is 64 bytes. An IP datagram of 65,536
bytes usually cannot be sent. But apparently when the packet is chooped up into
small pieces as it is sent down the line and then rebuilt at it destination, the
sheer size of the packet causes the buffer to overflow. The result can be a
reboot, hang, etc. A site in the UK has a detailed explanation of the Ping Of Death
(Source: Mike Bremford's Homepage).
To Smurf, Have Been Smurfed, Smurfing - no little blue
creatures here
A new threat has emerged on the Internet that once again takes the Ping
Utility and twists it around for evil ends. This new practice is called
smurfing. Smurfing takes a Ping packet and sends it to a network's broadcast
address. This is a specially designated address under which under usual
circumstances sends a message to all computers attached to it (up to 255). So, a
single Ping packet is increased by a factor of 255 and sent out. Only in this
case, the return address is doctored so that the packets are sent to the address
that the attacker choses. To give one an idea of how this can cripple a system,
a 28.8 modem can send out 42 64-byte Ping packets per second. When sent to a
broadcast network address, this becomes 10,626 packets or 5.2 Mbits of data per
second - enough to bring down a T1. (Remember that a T1 is 1.5 Mbits/sec) Smurf
attackers have now devised ways to have more than one broadcast address send out
packets at once during an attack. Thus, using the previous example, we must
increase by a factor of 50 (say if the attacker choses 50 broadcast addresses)
the 10,626 packets, which increases the number of packets per second to 531,300.
Boom. For more information and an excellent article from Wired magazine, click
Smurf
Article (Sources: PC Webopaedia site, Wired site)
Looking for a funny PING story? (Goto the bottom of the page) PING
Story
What is PING 127.0.0.1 and why was it chosen as the name
of the company? Goto Why PING
127.0.0.1
FreeBSD, SouceForge, Freshmeat, Mac OS X, from |
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