#use wml::template Title="echoping Home Page"

"echoping" is a small program to test (approximatively) performances of a remote host by sending it TCP "echo" (or other protocol) packets.

To install it, see the INSTALL file. Or type "make" if you're in a hurry :-) Download, if you wish. (Or you may prefer access the latest developments via CVS: the module is named "SRC".) You may be interested in SourceForge's page about echoping, with the bug reports, etc.

To use it, simply:

% echoping machine.somewhere.org

or use the options before the machine name (see the man page).

See the DETAILS file for various traps when benchmarking networks, specially with this program.

In any case, be polite: don't bother the remote host with many repeated requests, especially with large size. Ask for permission if you often test hosts which aren't yours.

Current features:

Supports IPv6 as well as IPv4,
uses the protocols echo, discard, chargen or HTTP,
uses UDP instead of TCP for the protocols which accept it (like echo),
can repeat the test and display various measures about it,
can use T/TCP on systems which support it.

Known bugs

Examples of output:

(Simple test with 1000 bytes echo TCP packets)

% echoping -v -s 1000 mycisco

This is echoping, version 5.0.0.

Trying to connect to internet address 172.21.0.14 7 to transmit 1000 bytes...
Connected...
TCP Latency: 0.003165 seconds
Sent (1000 bytes)...
Application Latency: 0.322183 seconds
1000 bytes read from server.
Checked
Elapsed time: 0.326960 seconds

(Repeated tests with average and median displayed.)

% echoping -n 10 faraway-machine
[...]
Minimum time: 6.722336 seconds (38 bytes per sec.)
Maximum time: 17.975060 seconds (14 bytes per sec.)
Average time: 10.873267 seconds (24 bytes per sec.)
Standard deviation: 3.102793
Median  time: 9.218506 seconds (28 bytes per sec.)

(Testing a Web server with an HTTP request for its home page.)
```
%  echoping -h / mywww
Elapsed time: 0.686792 seconds
```

The exit status is set if there is any problem, so you can use echoping to test repeatedly a Web server, to be sure it runs fine (SmokePing does it). Or you can display statistics like at Netaktiv (see the shell script which runs echoping).

To do for a future version: see the TODO file.