System Administration Commands ping(1M)
NAME
ping - send ICMP (ICMP6) ECHO_REQUEST packets to network
hostsSYNOPSIS
/usr/sbin/ping host [timeout]
/usr/sbin/ping -s [-l | -U] [-abdlLnrRv] [-A addr_family]
[-c traffic_class] [-g gateway [-g gateway...]]
[-N next_hop_router] [-F flow_label] [-I interval]
[-i interface] [-P tos] [-p port] [-t ttl] host
[data_size] [npackets]
DESCRIPTION
The utility ping utilizes the ICMP (ICMP6 in IPv6)
protocol's ECHO_REQUEST datagram to elicit an ICMP (ICMP6)
ECHO_RESPONSE from the specified host or network gateway. If
host responds, ping will print:
host is alive on the standard output and exit. Otherwise, after timeout seconds, it will write: no answer from host The default value of timeout is 20 seconds. When you specify the s flag, sends one datagram per second(adjust with -I) and prints one line of output for every
ECHO_RESPONSE that it receives. ping produces no output if
there is no response. In this second form, ping computes
round trip times and packet loss statistics; it displays a summary of this information upon termination or timeout. Thedefault data_size is 56 bytes, or you can specify a size
with the data_size command-line argument. If you specify the
optional npackets, ping sends ping requests until it either
sends npackets requests or receives npackets replies.When using ping for fault isolation, first ping the local
host to verify that the local network interface is running.SunOS 5.11 Last change: 28 Sep 2009 1
System Administration Commands ping(1M)
OPTIONS The following options are supported:-A addr_family
Specify the address family of the target host.addr_family can be either inet or inet6. Address family
determines which protocol to use. For an argument of inet, IPv4 is used. For inet6, IPv6 is used. By default, if the name of a host is provided, not the literal IP address, and a valid IPv6 address exists inthe name service database, ping will use this address.
Otherwise, if the name service database contains an IPv4 address, it will try the IPv4 address. Specify the address family inet or inet6 to override the default behavior. If the argument specified is inet,ping will use the IPv4 address associated with the host
name. If none exists, ping will state that the host is
unknown and exit. It does not try to determine if an IPv6 address exists in the name service database.If the specified argument is inet6, ping uses the IPv6
address that is associated with the host name. If noneexists, ping states that the host is unknown and exits.
-F flow_label
Specify the flow label of probe packets. The value must be an integer in the range from 0 to 1048575. This option is valid only on IPv6.-D
Turn off fragmentation. For IPv4, this means setting the Don't Fragment bit. For IPv4 and IPv6, this means do not allow fragmentation as the datagrams are sent. If thedata_size exceeds the MTU, then ping might report that
sending failed due to Message too long.-I interval
Turn on the statistics mode and specify the interval between successive transmissions. The default is onesecond. See the discussion of the -s option.
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System Administration Commands ping(1M)
-L
Turn off loopback of multicast packets. Normally, members are in the host group on the outgoing interface, a copy of the multicast packets will be delivered to the local machine.-N next_hop_router
Specify a next-hop router so that the probe packet goes
through the specified router along its path to the tar-
get host. This option essentially bypasses the systemrouting table and leaves the probe packet header unmodi-
fied. Only one next-hop router can be specified.
-P tos
Set the type of service (tos) in probe packets to the specified value. The default is zero. The value must be an integer in the range from 0 to 255. Gateways also inthe path can route the probe packet differently, depend-
ing upon the value of tos that is set in the probe packet. This option is valid only on IPv4.-R
Record route. Sets the IPv4 record route option, which stores the route of the packet inside the IPv4 header. The contents of the record route are only printed if the-v and -s options are given. They are only set on return
packets if the target host preserves the record routeoption across echos, or the -l option is given. This
option is valid only on IPv4.-U
Send UDP packets instead of ICMP (ICMP6) packets. ping
sends UDP packets to consecutive ports expecting toreceive back ICMP (ICMP6) PORT_UNREACHABLE from the tar-
get host.-a
ping all addresses, both IPv4 and IPv6, of the mul-
tihomed destination. The output appears as if ping has
been run once for each IP address of the destination. Ifthis option is used together with -A, ping probes only
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System Administration Commands ping(1M)
the addresses that are of the specified address family.When used with the -s option and npackets is not speci-
fied, ping continuously probes the destination addresses
in a round robin fashion. If npackets is specified, ping
sends npackets number of probes to each IP address of the destination and then exits.-b
Bypass the global IPsec policy and send and receive packets in the clear for this connection only. This option can be used to troubleshoot network connectivity independent of IPsec. Because this option bypassessystem-wide policy for this connection, it can only be
used by superuser or a user granted the sys_net_config
privilege.-c traffic_class
Specify the traffic class of probe packets. The value must be an integer in the range from 0 to 255. Gateways along the path can route the probe packet differently,depending upon the value of traffic_class set in the
probe packet. This option is valid only on IPv6.-d
Set the SO_DEBUG socket option.
-g gateway
Specify a loose source route gateway so that the probe packet goes through the specified host along the path to the target host. The maximum number of gateways is 8 for IPv4 and 127 for IPv6. Note that some factors such as the link MTU can further limit the number of gateways for IPv6.-i interface_address
Specify the outgoing interface address to use for multi-
cast packets for IPv4 and both multicast and unicastpackets for IPv6. The default interface address for mul-
ticast packets is determined from the (unicast) routingtables. interface_address can be a literal IP address,
for example, 10.123.100.99, or an interface name, for example, eri0, or an interface index, for example 2.SunOS 5.11 Last change: 28 Sep 2009 4
System Administration Commands ping(1M)
-l
Use to send the probe packet to the given host and back again using loose source routing. Usually specified withthe -R option. If any gateways are specified using -g,
they are visited twice, both to and from the destina-
tion. This option is ignored if the -U option is used.
-n
Show network addresses as numbers. ping normally does a
reverse name lookup on the IP addresses it extracts fromthe packets received. The -n option blocks the reverse
lookup, so ping prints IP addresses instead of host
names.-p port
Set the base UDP port number used in probes. This optionis used with the -U option. The default base port number
is 33434. The ping utility starts setting the destina-
tion port number of UDP packets to this base and incre-
ments it by one at each probe.-r
Bypass the normal routing tables and send directly to a host on an attached network. If the host is not on a directly attached network, an error is returned. Thisoption can be used to ping a local host through an
interface that has been dropped by the router daemon. See in.routed(1M).-s
Send one datagram per second and collect statistics.-t ttl
Specify the IPv4 time to live, or IPv6 hop limit, for unicast and multicast packets. The default time to live (hop limit) for unicast packets can be set with the nddmodule, /dev/icmp, using the icmp_ipv4_ttl variable for
IPv4 and the icmp_ipv6_hoplimit variable for IPv6. The
default time to live (hop limit) for multicast is onehop. See EXAMPLES. For further information, seendd(1M).
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System Administration Commands ping(1M)
-v
Verbose output. List any ICMP (ICMP6) packets, other than replies from the target host. OPERANDS host The network hostEXAMPLES
Example 1 Using ping With IPv6
This example shows ping sending probe packets to all the
IPv6 addresses of the host xyz, one at a time. It sends anICMP6 ECHO_REQUEST every second until the user interrupts
it.istanbul% ping -s -A inet6 -a xyz
PING xyz: 56 data bytes64 bytes from xyz (4::114:a00:20ff:ab3d:83ed): icmp_seq=0. time=0.479 ms
64 bytes from xyz (fec0::114:a00:20ff:ab3d:83ed): icmp_seq=1. time=0.843 ms
64 bytes from xyz (4::114:a00:20ff:ab3d:83ed): icmp_seq=2. time=0.516 ms
64 bytes from xyz (fec0::114:a00:20ff:ab3d:83ed): icmp_seq=3. time=4.943 ms
64 bytes from xyz (4::114:a00:20ff:ab3d:83ed): icmp_seq=4. time=0.485 ms
64 bytes from xyz (fec0::114:a00:20ff:ab3d:83ed): icmp_seq=5. time=2.201 ms
^C----xyz PING Statistics----
6 packets transmitted, 6 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip (ms) min/avg/stddev = 0.479/1.583/4.943/1.823
Example 2 Using ndd to Set the icmp_ipv6_hoplimit
This example shows the ndd module, /dev/icmp, used to setthe icmp_ipv6_hoplimit.
# ndd -set /dev/icmp icmp_ipv6_hoplimit 100
EXIT STATUS The following exit values are returned:SunOS 5.11 Last change: 28 Sep 2009 6
System Administration Commands ping(1M)
0 Successful operation; the machine is alive.non-zero
An error has occurred. Either a malformed argument has been specified, or the machine was not alive.ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | network/ftp ||_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
ifconfig(1M), in.routed(1M), ndd(1M), netstat(1M), rpcinfo(1M), traceroute(1M), attributes(5), icmp(7P), icmp6(7P)SunOS 5.11 Last change: 28 Sep 2009 7