Ubuntu Manpage: echoping - tests a remote host with TCP or UDP

Provided by: echoping_6.0.2-10ubuntu1_amd64

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>.

FILES

       /usr/lib/echoping
           Plugins directory

AUTHOR

       Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortz@users.sourceforge.net>