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From: cliff@garnet.berkeley.edu (Cliff Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Questions about the use of ping.
Message-ID: <1990Aug30.181407.16407@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 30 Aug 90 18:14:07 GMT
References: <227@voodoo.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator)
Reply-To: cliff@garnet.berkeley.edu (Cliff Frost)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <227@voodoo.UUCP>, howie@yo.uucp (howie) writes:
|> 
|>    Is there an easy way to determine the transfer time of data, other 
|>    than setting up a connection with FTP, and moving some test data?

If you want very simple memory to memory tests, you can send data to
the TCP (or UDP) discard port.  Tom Ferrin's "netout" does this for
TCP, it is available for anonymous ftp from jade.berkeley.edu (128.32.136.9).

|> 2) The man page for ping warns against using ping in shell scripts.  Is it

Calculate how much of your user's bandwidth you'll be using.  A few pings
on an ethernet are obviously trivial.

|> 3) Is there an alternative to the standard BSD ping that we should consider
|>    using?

Ping is more of a network management tool than a throughput tool, although
it is useful sometimes to give an idea of latency.  For network management
you want to use SNMP as much as possible.  There is an SNMP mailing list. 
Mail to snmp-request@nisc.nyser.net to join it.

	Cliff Frost                   (415) 642-5360
	Central Computing Services    <cliff@berkeley.edu>
	University of California      CLIFF AT UCBCMSA
	Berkeley, CA 94720