NTPING(8)

NAME
ntping - send icmp messages to more than one host or trace a route

SYNOPSIS
ntping [ -V ] [ -s size ] [ -b ] [ -r retries ] [ -t timeout ] [ -ttl hops ] [ -trace hops ] [ -mask ] [ -tstamp ] [ host1 ... ]

DESCRIPTION
Ntping send one or more pings (or icmp netmask / timestamp requests) to the given hosts and reports the ping-time in ms (or netmask / timestamp) to stdout. If no host is specified, the hostnames are read from stdin, each on a line, until EOF is read.

OPTIONS

-V  Print version string and exit.

-b(ones)
    Read input for scotty Tcl/Tk processing. An appropriate input would be:
     { foorbar nasi.goerg.de gna.nase.edu }
    The brackets are simply ignored. The output looks like:
    {foorbar 20} {nasi.goerg.de 534} {hiho -1}
    or the command
     -ttl 2 foo.bar.de gna.nase.edu
    will be answered by something like
    {134.88.12.9 176} {192.77.18.5 53}
    The parameters can be sent at the start of each input line. Bad values are silently adjusted.

-s(ize) size
    Use size bytes large packets. Default is 64 bytes and the maximum is 2020 bytes.

-r(retries) retries
    Resend the packet retries times. Default is 5 times.

-t(imeout) timeout
    Set timeout to timeout seconds for all retries. Default is 5 seconds. If a large number of hosts is given, it may take at all longer (eg. 20 secs for 1000 hosts).

-d(elay) delaytime
    Set the delaytime after a packet has been sent to delaytime milliseconds. Default is no delay. Delays below 20 ms are tried to manage without usleep(), but there are possible errors of 1 or 2 ms.
    Please note, that the delay is not contained in the timeout. The delay time is additionally used. For 1000 hosts with 3 retries (leading to a maximum of 4 packets sent per host) a delay of 5 ms gives easily a additional runtime of 10 (up to 20 or 30) seconds.
    Please note also, a long delay can corrupt the results: a ping time of 10 ms with a delay of 100 ms may be reported as a ping time of 110 ms, which is quite confusing - you are warned.

-nocheckswap
    Don't check byte-swapped src/dest ports in a icmp-reply (with a udp-header in the data section). Default is to check and therefore to find even hops, which send wrong answers.

-ttl hops
    Do a trace with time-to-live set to nhops hops. There is no default. The Maximum is 30 hops.

-trace hops
    Should do the same as -ttl , but returns the given host if the destination is reached (must be in dotted notation for that).

-mask
    Send an icmp probe with a mask-request. This is similar to the default ping probe, but the mask is reported (in dot notation). Unknown masks are returned as 0.0.0.0.

-tstamp
    Send an icmp timestamp request. This is similar to the default ping probe, but the difference of the localtime and the remotetime is reported (in milli seconds). Unknown stamps are returned as 9999 and within bones-mode as an empty list element.
    Please note: To fetch the correct time difference, you have to deal with the runtime of the packet.

SEE ALSO
ping(8),traceroute(8)

DIAGNOSTICS
Especially root permission is needed to send and receive icmp-datagrams. This is complained, if not given.

BUGS
Verbose flag needs to be added.
The standard interface without flags should be more ``nice''.
Tracerouting works for max ~300 hosts at a time.

AUTHORS
Bert Nase (schoenfr@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de)
Kaept'n Koerg (james@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de)