[TriLUG] OT: Amiable ping target

[Jon Carnes]

We monitor QoS by measuring latencies along our path to various targets.
For IP's we use a traceroute from one endpoint to the other then ping to
the actual endpoints and routers along the path. This is much more
valuable information than just a general "are we up?" signal.

Using this we can quickly zero in on problem spots within the networks
of the ISP's that service our customers. We often end up knowing more
about the ISP networks than their own engineers.

Jon Carnes

On Fri, 2005-08-26 at 09:08, Brian Henning wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>    Pardon my ignorance...but is there an IP somewhere out there that is 
> specifically set up to be a ping target for checking connectivity? 
> We're having some serious issues with our DSL here lately, and I want to 
> set up a task to monitor it with pretty high resolution, say, around one 
> ping per second (I have a feeling some of its frequent flakings are only 
> seconds in length, but enough to interrupt our VPN).
> 
> Obviously, doing this sort of thing would require a target (or more 
> probably, list of targets) that are highly reliable themselves, to avoid 
> false down indications.  So I'd probably create a list of N targets, and 
> each would only see a ping from me every N seconds unless one failed, in 
> which case the process would ping the next target on the list immediately.
> 
> My concern, of course, being a [hopefully] nice little Net citizen, is 
> not wanting to irritate anyone by taking about 302kB out of their 
> transfer quota every hour (3600 pings * 84 bytes each), unless they're 
> intending to be so generous.
> 
> In other words, I have a feeling I shouldn't just randomly choose some 
> hosts (unless I choose a huge number of them...a possibility).  Hence 
> the question.
> 
> And as a sideline question, if there's a nice utility out there already 
> to do something like that (take a list of hosts and ping one every X 
> seconds and report on the success), I'd love to know about it.
> 
> Thanks a bunch as always!
> ~Brian