Linux Answers Magazine: The Humble Ping Nov 13, 1999, 22 :03 UTC (0 Talkback[s]) (2544 reads) (Other stories by James
Jeffrey)
"Experienced users of Unix/Linux or even (Yuch!) Wintel will probably know,
so forgive me, but keep reading. Ping is a little tool which lets you test the
IP network link between your computer and somewhere else. It tells you the
speed of a link, the reliability and in fact whether it works at all. It can also
tell you if your nameserver (DNS) configuration is working and thus,
whether www.yahoo.com is actually going to mean anything to your
computer, and if so, whether you can access it. It will even tell you if that
remote server has crashed. It is also a good way of bringing up demand-dial
ppp links and keeping timeouts from happening. You can even have it crash
a fileserver."
"A lot of us use dial on demand internet links, which timeout after a given
time. Sometimes, like when you are waiting for an e-mail, you don't want
this. Try issuing the command "ping -i 10 www.yahoo.com". This will cause
your computer to send a data packet across the Internet to yahoo every
ten seconds until you press control-c and kill ping. This means the link
stays open. If you want to stop ping automatically after a given time, you
can use the count option again. If I want the link to stay open for at least
a minute, that is 6 times 10 seconds, so I use "ping -l10 -c6
www.yahoo.com". This command will cause ping to sit there and keep that
link open. After 1 minute, it stops."
