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From: info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA
Newsgroups: fa.info-vax
Subject: Pinging gateways
Message-ID: <2610@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 17-Oct-84 12:40:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.2610
Posted: Wed Oct 17 12:40:45 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Oct-84 19:21:30 EDT
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Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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From: Ron Tencati 


Since it was I that made the original request for software to "ping" a 
gateway, I should respond to the inquiry as to what a "ping" is so everyone
will know what I was asking.

I am not a technical person at all.  As I understood it, you run some program
and tell it the net-address of a gateway (or host) that you wanted to check yourconnection to. The software would then send some number of packets out to that
address and wait for some to return. After some length of time, it would
print a summary of timing delays and packets sent/recieved which would
implicitly tell you that you could in fact make a connection to that address.

I need that information to check out my routing tables so I can be sure that
all my routes are valid. I am still not sure.

I admit that this information is probably wrong, but wrong as it may be, it was
the basis for my previous question.  I understand that it is not a good idea to
"ping" anything since all it does is flood the net with packets, and if every
one pinged, there would be no traffic getting through.... but what about my
route tables?  I could still use some advice...

Ron Tencati
TENCATI@JPL-VLSI
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