other interesting ping commands

One of the most commonly used linux commands when trying to reach a host is the ping command.

Basically ping commands tries to reach a host by sending out ICMP ECHO_REQUESTT and wait for a particular ECHO reply packets to know if the network host is reachable or not. However, if ICMP command is being blocked, it gives you a "Reply time out".

Here are alternative linux commands for determining a network/internet host.

# yum -y install fping
# fping 198.6.1.2

gives you a human readable status of the host, like the lines below

198.6.1.2 is alive
198.6.1.254 is unreachable

# arping 198.6.1.2

sends out ARP REQUEST and return with MAC address and average latency reply. Mainly used for getting the MAC address if the host is confirmed alive.

# ping6 198.6.1.2

for ping IPV6 network address

# irdaping

sends out irDA test frames. I never tried out this one yet due to limited resources.

# l2ping -i hci1

sends out L2CAP echo request to the bluetooth device #1, the first available bluetooth device


HTH