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 FPING(8)                           fping                           FPING(8)
                                 2013-05-21



 NAME
      fping - send ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packets to network hosts

 SYNOPSIS
      fping [ options ] [ systems... ] fping6 [ options ] [ systems... ]

 DESCRIPTION
      fping is a program like ping which uses the Internet Control Message
      Protocol (ICMP) echo request to determine if a target host is
      responding.  fping differs from ping in that you can specify any
      number of targets on the command line, or specify a file containing
      the lists of targets to ping.  Instead of sending to one target until
      it times out or replies, fping will send out a ping packet and move on
      to the next target in a round-robin fashion.  In the default mode, if
      a target replies, it is noted and removed from the list of targets to
      check; if a target does not respond within a certain time limit and/or
      retry limit it is designated as unreachable. fping also supports
      sending a specified number of pings to a target, or looping
      indefinitely (as in ping ). Unlike ping, fping is meant to be used in
      scripts, so its output is designed to be easy to parse.

      The binary named fping6 is the same as fping, except that it uses IPv6
      addresses instead of IPv4.

 OPTIONS
      -a   Show systems that are alive.

      -A   Display targets by address rather than DNS name.

      -b n Number of bytes of ping data to send.  The minimum size (normally
           12) allows room for the data that fping needs to do its work
           (sequence number, timestamp).  The reported received data size
           includes the IP header (normally 20 bytes) and ICMP header (8
           bytes), so the minimum total size is 40 bytes.  Default is 56, as
           in ping. Maximum is the theoretical maximum IP datagram size
           (64K), though most systems limit this to a smaller, system-
           dependent number.

      -B n In the default mode, fping sends several requests to a target
           before giving up, waiting longer for a reply on each successive
           request.  This parameter is the value by which the wait time is
           multiplied on each successive request; it must be entered as a
           floating-point number (x.y).  The default is 1.5.

      -c n Number of request packets to send to each target.  In this mode,
           a line is displayed for each received response (this can
           suppressed with -q or -Q).  Also, statistics about responses for
           each target are displayed when all requests have been sent (or
           when interrupted).





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 FPING(8)                           fping                           FPING(8)
                                 2013-05-21



      -C n Similar to -c, but the per-target statistics are displayed in a
           format designed for automated response-time statistics gathering.
           For example:

            % fping -C 5 -q somehost
            somehost : 91.7 37.0 29.2 - 36.8

           shows the response time in milliseconds for each of the five
           requests, with the "-" indicating that no response was received
           to the fourth request.

      -d   Use DNS to lookup address of return ping packet. This allows you
           to give fping a list of IP addresses as input and print hostnames
           in the output.

      -D   Add Unix timestamps in front of output lines generated with in
           looping or counting modes (-l, -c, or -C).

      -e   Show elapsed (round-trip) time of packets.

      -f   Read list of targets from a file.  This option can only be used
           by the root user. Regular users should pipe in the file via
           stdin:

            % fping < targets_file

      -g addr/mask
           Generate a target list from a supplied IP netmask, or a starting
           and ending IP.  Specify the netmask or start/end in the targets
           portion of the command line. If a network with netmask is given,
           the network and broadcast addresses will be excluded. ex. To ping
           the network 192.168.1.0/24, the specified command line could look
           like either:

            fping -g 192.168.1.0/24

           or

            fping -g 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.254

      -h   Print usage message.

      -i n The minimum amount of time (in milliseconds) between sending a
           ping packet to any target (default is 25).

      -l   Loop sending packets to each target indefinitely. Can be
           interrupted with Ctrl-C; statistics about responses for each
           target are then displayed.

      -m   Send pings to each of a target host's multiple interfaces.




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 FPING(8)                           fping                           FPING(8)
                                 2013-05-21



      -n   Same as -d.

      -p <n>
           In looping or counting modes (-l, -c, or -C), this parameter sets
           the time in milliseconds that fping waits between successive
           packets to an individual target.  Default is 1000.

      -q   Quiet. Don't show per-probe results, but only the final summary.
           Also don't show ICMP error messages.

      -Q n Like -q, but show summary results every n seconds.

      -r n Retry limit (default 3). This is the number of times an attempt
           at pinging a target will be made, not including the first try.

      -s   Print cumulative statistics upon exit.

      -S addr
           Set source address.

      -I if
           Set the interface (requires SO_BINDTODEVICE support)

      -t n Initial target timeout in milliseconds (default 500). In the
           default mode, this is the amount of time that fping waits for a
           response to its first request.  Successive timeouts are
           multiplied by the backoff factor.

      -T n Ignored (for compatibility with fping 2.4).

      -u   Show targets that are unreachable.

      -O n Set the typ of service flag (TOS). n can be either decimal or
           hexadecimal (0xh) format.

      -v   Print fping version information.

      -H n Set the IP TTL field (time to live hops).

 AUTHORS
      +   Roland J. Schemers III, Stanford University, concept and versions
          1.x

      +   RL "Bob" Morgan, Stanford University, versions 2.x

      +   David Papp, versions 2.3x and up

      +   David Schweikert, versions 3.0 and up

      fping website: <http://www.fping.org>




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 FPING(8)                           fping                           FPING(8)
                                 2013-05-21



 DIAGNOSTICS
      Exit status is 0 if all the hosts are reachable, 1 if some hosts were
      unreachable, 2 if any IP addresses were not found, 3 for invalid
      command line arguments, and 4 for a system call failure.

 RESTRICTIONS
      If certain options are used (i.e, a low value for -i and -t, and a
      high value for -r) it is possible to flood the network. This program
      must be installed as setuid root in order to open up a raw socket, or
      must be run by root. In order to stop mere mortals from hosing the
      network, normal users can't specify the following:

      +   -i n, where n < 10 msec

      +   -r n, where n > 20

      +   -t n, where n < 250 msec

 SEE ALSO
      ping(8)


































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