Provided by: echoping_6.0.2-10ubuntu2_amd64 bug

NAME

       echoping - tests a remote host with TCP or UDP

SYNOPSIS

       echoping  [-4]  [-6]  [-v]  [-V]  [-ffill]  [-ttimeout] [-c] [-d] [-u] [-ssize] [-nnumber]
       [-wdelay] [-hurl-or-path] [-R] [-iurl] [-ppriority] [-Ptos] [-C] [-S] [-A] [-a] [-mplugin]
       hostname [:port] [plugin options...]

DESCRIPTION

       echoping  is  a  small program to test (approximatively) performances of a remote Internet
       host by sending it TCP "echo" packets. It can use other protocols as well  (HTTP  -  which
       makes it a good tool to test Web servers, UDP "echo", etc).

       echoping  simply  shows  the elapsed time, including the time to set up the TCP connection
       and to transfer the data. Therefore, it is unsuitable  to  physical  line  raw  throughput
       measures  (unlike bing or treno). On the other end, the action it performs are close from,
       for instance, a HTTP request and it is meaningful to use it  (carefully)  to  measure  Web
       performances.

ARGUMENT

       hostname[:port]
              Name  (or  address) of the server to test. For HTTP, you can specify a port number.
              For HTTP and IPv6, you can use RFC 2732 syntax (you will probably  need  to  escape
              the brackets from the shell). The name can be an IDN (Unicode domain name).

OPTIONS

       -v     Verbose

       -V     Displays the compiled-in configuration of echoping. Useful for bug reports.

       -s nnn Size  of  the data to send. Large values can produce strange results with some echo
              servers.

       -n nnn Numbers of repeated tests. With this option, you have also  the  minimum,  maximum,
              average and median time, as well as the standard deviation. The median is the value
              such that half of the measures are under it and the other half is above.  When  you
              measure  highly  variables values, like it is often the case on the whole Internet,
              median is better than average to avoid "extreme" values. You can check the  "value"
              of  the average by looking at the standard deviation: very roughly, if the standard
              deviation is more than the half of the average, the average does not mean anything.
              (See a book about statistics for the details: the reality is far more complicated.)

       -w nnn Number of seconds to wait between two tests (default is one). On systems which have
              usleep(), you can write it as a fractional number, such  as  3.14.  Otherwise,  use
              integers.

       -t nnn Number  of  seconds  to wait a reply before giving up. For TCP, this is the maximum
              number of seconds for the whole connection (setup and data exchange).

       -u     Use UDP instead of TCP

       -d     Use the "discard" service instead of echo

       -c     Use the "chargen" service instead of echo

       -h url-or-path
              Use the HTTP protocol (instead of echo) for the given URL. If the hostname  is  the
              Web  server,  the  argument  has  to be a path, a relative URL (for instance '/' or
              '/pics/foobar.gif'). If the hostname is a proxy/cache like Squid, the argument  has
              to be an absolute URL.

       -R     Accept  HTTP status codes 3xx (redirections) as normal responses (the default is to
              regard them as errors)

       -i url Use the ICP protocol (instead of echo) for the given URL. The  URL  has  to  be  an
              absolute one. This is mostly for testing Squid Web proxy/caches.

       -A     Force the proxy (if you use one) to ignore the cache

       -a     Force the proxy (if you use one) to revalidate data with the original server

       -C     Use the SSL/TLS (cryptography) protocol. For HTTP tests only.

       -S     Use the SMTP protocol (instead of echo) for the given server.

       -4     Use only IPv4 (even if the target machine has an IPv6 address)

       -6     Use only IPv6 (even if the target machine has an IPv4 address)

       -f character
              Fill the packet with this character (default is random filling)

       -D     Tries to display actual data transfer duration only, not total time

       -N n   Displays  an  average which excludes values ("outliers") which are further than +/-
              N*standard deviation

       -p n   Send packets with the socket priority to the integer n.  The mapping of the  socket
              priority  into  a  network  layer or a link layer priority depends upon the network
              protocol and link protocol in use.  For more details see SO_PRIORITY in socket(7).

       -P n   Set the IP  type  of  service  octet  in  the  transmitted  packets  to  the  least
              significant  eight  bits  of  the integer n.  See ip(7) or ip(4) (depending on your
              Unix). /usr/include/netinet/ip.h may contain interesting constants for setting Type
              Of Service.

       -m plugin
              Load  the  given  plugin.  The  plugin  is  first  searched  in  the normal library
              directories (see  ld.so(8)  )  then  in  /usr/lib/echoping.  You  can  type  ls  in
              /usr/lib/echoping  to get an idea of the available plugins. The documentation for a
              given plugin is in echoping_PLUGINNAME(1) The plugin-specific options appear  after
              the hostname.

EXAMPLES

       echoping -v foobar.example.com
              Tests the remote machine with TCP echo (one test).

       echoping -n 5 -w 10 foobar.example.com
              Tests the remote machine with TCP echo (five tests, every ten seconds).

       echoping -h / foobar.example.com
              Tests  the  remote  Web  server and asks its home page. Note you don't indicate the
              whole URL.

       echoping -h http://www.example.com/ cache.example.com:3128
              Tests the remote Web proxy-cache and asks a Web page. Note that you  must  indicate
              the whole URL.

       echoping -n 3 -m whois foobar.example.com -d tao.example.org
              Loads  the whois plugin and query the host foobar.example.com. "-d tao.example.org"
              are options specific to the whois plugin.

       echoping -u -P 0xa0 foobar.example.com
              Sends several UDP Echo packets with an IP Precedence of 5.

IP TYPE OF SERVICE OCTET

       The IP packet header contains 8 bits named the "type of service octet".  The value of  the
       octet  is  set  with  the  -P option.  The effects of the octet are defined differently in
       RFC791 Internet Protocol and RFC2474 Definition of the Differentiated Services  Field  (DS
       Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers.

       RFC791  defines  Precedence  which  has  ascending priorities 0 through to 7, and the bits
       Delay, Throughput, Reliability, and Cost which indicates the application's preference  for
       the  properties  of  the  packet's  path  through  the network.  Precedence is in the most
       significant three bits of the type of service octet, followed  in  decending  significance
       order by the D, T, R and C bits.  The least significant bit must be zero.  Only one of the
       D, T, R or C bits may be set.

       RFC2474 defines the Distributed Services Code Point, or DSCP.  This  acts  as  a  selector
       between  64  possible behaviours that the network can apply to the packet.  The DSCP is in
       the most significant six  bits  of  the  type  of  service  octet.   The  remaining  least
       significant two bits of the octet must be zero.

       The  numeric arguments to -p and -P can be in decimal (such as 11), octal (such as 013) or
       hexadecimal (such as 0x0b).  So padding decimal arguments with leading zeros  will  change
       the value read.

       You  may  need  to  be  superuser  to  set  some -p or -P values (precedence on Linux, for
       instance).

BUGS

       See           SourceForge           bug           tracking            system            at
       <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=4581&atid=104581>.

SEE ALSO

       See the README for information about other network measurements programs.

FILES

       /usr/lib/echoping
           Plugins directory

AUTHOR

       Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortz@users.sourceforge.net>