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echoping(1)			    echoping			     echoping(1)

NAME
     echoping - tests a remote host with TCP or UDP

SYNOPSIS
     echoping  [-4]  [-6]  [-v]  [-V]  [-ffill]  [-ttimeout] [-c] [-d] [-u] [-T]
     [-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 re-
     mote  Internet host by sending it TCP "echo" packets. It can use other pro-
     tocols 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 3986 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 mini-
	    mum, maximum, average and median time, as well as the standard devi-
	    ation.  The  median  is the value such that half of the measures are
	    under it and the other half is above. When you measure highly  vari-
	    ables  values,  like it is often the case on the whole Internet, me-
	    dian 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 sta-
	    tistics 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 num-
	    ber, 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

     -T     Use SCTP 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  rela-
	    tive  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  origi-
	    nal 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 in-
	    teresting 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/local/lib/echoping.
	    You  can  type  ls	in /usr/local/lib/echoping to get an idea of the
	    available plugins. The documentation for a given plugin is in echop-
	    ing_PLUGINNAME(1) The plugin-specific options appear after the host-
	    name.

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  sec-
	    onds).

     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  Head-
     ers.

     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  ser-
     vice  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://source-
     forge.net/tracker/?group_id=4581&atid=104581>.

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

FILES
     /usr/local/lib/echoping
	 Plugins directory

AUTHOR
     Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortz@users.sourceforge.net>

ECHOPING			November 22, 1996		     echoping(1)

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