echoping(1)

NAME
echoping - tests a remote host with TCP or UDP

SYNOPSIS
echoping [-vudcr] [-s number] [-n number] [-w number] [-t number] [-h URL] hostname

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, 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.

OPTIONS

-v  Verbose

-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. 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.

-w nnn
    Number of seconds to wait between two tests (default is one)

-t nnn
    Number of seconds to wait a reply before giving up

-u  Use UDP instead of TCP

-d  Use the "discard" service instead of echo

-c  Use the "chargen" service instead of echo

-h url
    Use the HTTP protocol (instead of echo) for the given URL. The URL has to be a relative one (for instance '/' or '/pics/foobar.gif') because HTTP 1.0 servers will not understand a request for an absolute URL.

-r  Use T/TCP (if it has been compiled with it). See the INSTALL file for details.

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

EXAMPLES

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

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

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

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

BUGS
UDP isn't really useable with large packets because of sockets limitations and the lack of workaround code

SEE ALSO
See the README for information about other network measurements programs.

AUTHOR
Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@pasteur.fr>