Linux Gazette: ping Aug 5, 2000, 19 :43 UTC (2 Talkback[s]) (4507 reads) (Other stories by Pat Eyler)
"Ping used to be a very good indicator of a machines ability to receive and send IP packets in general. If you could ping a
host, you could also make an ftp or http connection. With the wider advent of packet filtering for security, this is becoming
less true."
"There are several useful options to the ping command. ... These options can be combined to make ping even more helpful. One thing that you cannot see is that the ping command
used in the previous section is likely to take several seconds to run and report back. Using the -f switch will reduce the time
spent waiting for the command. Combining this with the -c 10 and the -q switches will give you quick results and easier
output to read...
Note: The -f and -l switches can only be used by root, as they can cause serious network degradation if misused."
"It might be of some benefit to test larger packets, using ping -c10 -s 1024 -qf will send larger packets for you. This can
be especially useful where you suspect problems with fragmented packets.
To see the route that your packets are traversing, you can use ping -c10 -R.
... Note: The record route option specified by the -R switch is not honored by all routers and hosts. Further, it contains only a
limited space to hold router addresses, traceroute may be a better tool for identifying the path packets follow through a
network."
