Protocol Overview
Ping is a computer network administration software utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network. It measures the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer that are echoed back to the source. The name comes from active sonar terminology that sends a pulse of sound and listens for the echo to detect objects under water, although it is sometimes interpreted as a backronym to packet Internet groper. Read more on Wikipedia.
Implemented features
ICMP protocol allows you to test if the specified host is available. During the test the response time is always mesured but the results are not always saved.
Important
Some hosts may have defined firewall rules to block ICMP packets. In these situations we will NOT be notified about the server response time, and even if the host is alive, you will be informed that the host is down.
Protocol settings
Pulse - Monitoring Tool for JIRA provides the availability of the host mechanism.
You can define:
- the tested host address,
- the expected response time,
- a successful service status strategy,
- the timeout.
If the timeout is reached and you still do NOT have a response, it means that the remote host is down or over firewall. The timeout protects your service from endless waiting for the response - after that period your service will be notified about the unavailability and the next test will be executed.
Service status strategy allows you to specify if:
- all or any of attempts succeded,
- we want to use minimal, maximal or average test values to compare with your values.
Examples
Below you can see an example of the ICMP protocol configuration in Pulse - Monitoring Tool for JIRA.
There are a few elements to test ICMP services.
They include:
- send an ICMP packet to the remote host,
- the remote host CANNOT have the ICMP packets blocking rule and has to be alive,
- the remote host have to send response,
- the average time of all attempts between your request and the host response have to be lower than 20 (miliseconds).
The test will be successful if any (in this case any of five) attempt finishes successfully. The timeout for each attempt cannot exceed 0.5 second (i.e. 500 millis). In addition, we checked the "Collect test history" option which means that all test results will be stored in the database. It enables a status history analysis. Stored detailed results are downloadable as a CSV file.