echoping/SRC/DETAILS

Some details about echoping
------------

echoping is a debugging tool. It is not a "end user" tool. For
instance, HTTP testing takes host names, not URLs as parameters (if
you want to test in a more HTTPish way, use wget). Also, when
connecting to a server which has both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses,
echoping does not try every address in turn like most user-oriented
programs do. If you want to test only the IPv4 address, use the
address, not the host name (or use the -4 option).

echo service:

echoping assumes the remote host accepts such connections. Experience
show that most Internet routers do and many hosts also. However, some
Unices are not shipped with this service enabled and, anyway, the
administrator is always free to close it (I think they
shouldn't). echoping has therefore less chance to succeed than ping or
bing. (On a typical Unix box, "echo" service is configured in
/etc/inetd.conf but see the CERT advisory
<http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-96.01.UDP_service_denial.html>.)

What does it measure?

echoping simply shows the elapsed time, including the time to set up
the TCP connection and to transfer the data (but excluding the time
for the - possible - DNS call). Therefore, it is unsuitable to
physical line raw throughput measures (unlike bing). On the other end,
the action it performs are close from a HTTP request and it is
meaningful to use it (carefully) to measure Web performances.

UDP and inetd:

With UDP servers you can have surprises: the first test is quite often
much slower since inetd has to launch the process. After that, the
process stays a while so the next texts run faster.

A nice example:

There are many, many traps when measuring something on the
Internet. Just one example: 'echoping -w 0 -n 4 a-sunOS-machine' and
you'll see the first test succeed in a very short time (if you are
close from the machine) and all of the others take a much longer time
(one second). With '-w 1' (wait one second between tests, the
default), everything works fine: it seems the sockets on SunOS need
time to recover :-)

To measure performances on the Internet you can also see:

Unix:

- bing, a bandwidth measurement tool <ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/networking>
- ping, probably available with your system
- traceroute, idem (otherwise, see <ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/>)
- ttcp, the best measurement tool but it needs some control over the 
  two machines <ftp://ftp.arl.mil/pub/ttcp> (nothing to do with
  the T/TCP protocol)
- treno (evaluates available bandwidth for TCP) 
  <http://www.psc.edu/~pscnoc/treno_info.html>
- spray is a tool which I dont't know very well. It is available on some 
  machines (Sun, OSF/1).
I've also heard of but never tried:
- the very good mon program <http://www.kernel.org/software/mon/> includes a 
  up_rtt.monitor which has many similarities with echoping
- NetPerf <http://www.netperf.org/netperf/NetperfPage.html>
- a suite of Bandwidth Measuring programs from gnn@netcom.com 
  <ftp://ftp.netcom.com/~ftp/gnn/bwmeas-0.3.tar.Z>. These are several 
  programs that measure bandwidth and jitter over several kinds of 
  IPC links, including TCP and UDP.
  
Macintosh:

- TCP Watcher, a very nice "swiss-army knife" tool, to test ping, DNS, echo. 
  It includes an echo server. Available on Info-Mac in "comm/tcp".

MS-Windows:

(I have little knowledge of that environment and I tested nothing.) 

- WSNUTIL. Seems to be an echo client and server. 
  <http://www.ccs.org/winsock/xref-e.html#echo_clients>
- echox32. An echo server.
  <http://www.winsite.com/info/pc/win95/misc/echox32.zip/>
- cfinger. An echo client and server.
  <http://www.winsite.com/info/pc/win3/winsock/cfing13b.zip/>
  
Windows-NT :

echo and other services can (apparently) be provided within 'Simple
TCP/IP Services' which can be enabled through the Network Control
Panel

Web clients:

- You can ping or traceroute on the Web. See 
  <http://www.freenix.org/cgi-bin/traceroute.iphtml>,
  <http://www.tracert.com/> or
  <http://www.fr.net/internet/trace.html>.


Use all of them with care, the result is not obvious to interpret.

And don't forget to read RFC 1470 ("Tools for Monitoring and Debugging
TCP/IP Internets and Interconnected Devices"), specially its
"Benchmark" section and the W. Richard Stevens' books (all of them),
published by Addison-Wesley.


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