Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE DESKTOP 10 SP2 - DEPLOYMENT GUIDE 08-05-2008 Deployment Manual page 658

to the destination host, requesting an immediate reply. If this works, ping displays a
message to that effect, which indicates that the network link is basically functioning.
ping does more than test only the function of the connection between two computers:
it also provides some basic information about the quality of the connection. In Exam-
ple 30.10, "Output of the Command ping" (page 642), you can see an example of the
ping output. The second-to-last line contains information about number of transmitted
packets, packet loss, and total time of ping running.
As the destination, you can use a hostname or IP address, for example,
ping example.com or ping 130.57.5.75. The program sends packets until
you press Ctrl + C .
If you only need to check the functionality of the connection, you can limit the number
of the packets with the -c option. For example to limit ping to three packets, enter
ping -c 3 192.168.0.
Example 30.10 Output of the Command ping
ping -c 3 example.com
PING example.com (130.57.5.75) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from example.com (130.57.5.75): icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=188 ms
64 bytes from example.com (130.57.5.75): icmp_seq=2 ttl=49 time=184 ms
64 bytes from example.com (130.57.5.75): icmp_seq=3 ttl=49 time=183 ms
--- example.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2007ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 183.417/185.447/188.259/2.052 ms
The default interval between two packets is one second. To change the interval, ping
provides option -i. For example to increase ping interval to ten seconds, enter ping -i
10 192.168.0.
In a system with multiple network devices, it is sometimes useful to send the ping
through a specific interface address. To do so, use the -I option with the name of the
selected device, for example, ping -I wlan1 192.168.0.
For more options and information about using ping, enter ping -h or see the ping
(8) man page.
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