ping(1M) System Administration Commands ping(1M)NAMEping - send ICMP (ICMP6) ECHO_REQUEST packets to network hosts
SYNOPSIS
/usr/sbin/ping host [timeout]
/usr/sbin/ping -s [-l | -U] [-adlLnrRv] [-A addr_family] [-c traf‐
fic_class] [-g gateway [ -g gateway...]] [-F flow_label] [-I inter‐
val] [-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 sec‐
ond form, ping computes round trip times and packet loss statistics; it
displays a summary of this information upon termination or timeout. The
default 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 ver‐
ify that the local network interface is running.
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 in the 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 none exists, 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.
-I interval Turn on the statistics mode and specify the
interval between successive transmissions. The
default is one second. See the discussion of
the -s option.
-L Turn off loopback of multicast packets. Nor‐
mally, members are in the host group on the
outgoing interface, a copy of the multicast
packets will be delivered to the local machine.
-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 in the path can route
the probe packet differently, depending 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
route option across echos, or the -l option is
given. This option is valid only on IPv4.
-U Send UDP packets instead of ICMP (ICMP6) pack‐
ets. ping sends UDP packets to consecutive
ports expecting to receive back ICMP (ICMP6)
PORT_UNREACHABLE from the target host.
-aping all addresses, both IPv4 and IPv6, of the
multihomed destination. The output appears as
if ping has been run once for each IP address
of the destination. If this option is used
together with -A, ping probes only the
addresses that are of the specified address
family. When used with the -s option and npack‐
ets is not specified, 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.
-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 multicast packets for IPv4 and both multi‐
cast and unicast packets for IPv6. The default
interface address for multicast packets is
determined from the (unicast) routing tables.
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.
-l Use to send the probe packet to the given host
and back again using loose source routing.
Usually specified with the -R option. If any
gateways are specified using -g, they are vis‐
ited twice, both to and from the destination.
This option is ignored if the -U option is
used.
-n Show network addresses as numbers. ping nor‐
mally does a reverse name lookup on the IP
addresses it extracts from the 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 option is used with the -U option. The
default base port number is 33434. The ping
utility starts setting the destination 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. This option 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 sta‐
tistics.
-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 ndd module,
/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 one hop. See EXAMPLES. For further
information, seendd(1M).
-v Verbose output. List any ICMP (ICMP6) packets,
other than replies from the target host.
OPERANDS
host The network host
EXAMPLES
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 an ICMP6 ECHO_REQUEST every
second until the user interrupts it.
istanbul% ping-s -A inet6 -a xyz
PING xyz: 56 data bytes
64 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=4.94 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=2.20 ms
^C
----xyz PING Statistics----
6 packets transmitted, 6 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip (ms) min/avg/stddev = 0.479/1.58/4.94/1.8
Example 2: Using ndd to Set the icmp_ipv6_hoplimit
This example shows the ndd module, /dev/icmp, used to set the
icmp_ipv6_hoplimit.
# ndd -set /dev/icmp icmp_ipv6_hoplimit 100
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
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 attributes:
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │SUNWbip │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
SEE ALSOifconfig(1M), in.routed(1M), ndd(1M), netstat(1M), rpcinfo(1M), tracer‐
oute(1M), attributes(5), icmp(7P), icmp6(7P)SunOS 5.10 11 Mar 2004 ping(1M)
