UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Is there any option for the utility "ping" , which can ping all the machines in the network?

I came to knw that "fping" can do this. The following info I got by googleing: But this command is not working in Redhat linux.




fping is a program which uses the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request to determine if a host is up. fping is different from ping in that you can specify any number of hosts on the command line, or specify a file containing the lists of hosts to ping. Instead of trying one host until it timeouts or replies, fping will send out a ping packet and move on to the next host in a round-robin fashion. If a host replies, it is noted and removed from the list of hosts to check. If a host does not respond within a certain time limit and/or retry limit it will be considered unreachable.

Basically fping is meant to be used in shell scripts and its output is easy to parse. This command can be very useful to when you have to scan whole network for alive or unreachable hosts. In case of usage regular ping command you'll have to write shell script and parse each hosts icmp replies but fping can do the same in one line:

To scan range of IP addresses from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.9 just run:

Code:

sudo fping -s -g 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.9 -r 1

That will output:

Code:

192.168.0.1 is alive
192.168.0.7 is alive
192.168.0.2 is unreachable
192.168.0.3 is unreachable
192.168.0.4 is unreachable
192.168.0.5 is unreachable
192.168.0.6 is unreachable
192.168.0.8 is unreachable
192.168.0.9 is unreachable

9 targets
2 alive
7 unreachable
0 unknown addresses

14 timeouts (waiting for response)
16 ICMP Echos sent
2 ICMP Echo Replies received
0 other ICMP received

0.05 ms (min round trip time)
0.44 ms (avg round trip time)
0.84 ms (max round trip time)
2.183 sec (elapsed real time)

In order to scan /24 network (254 hosts) and show only alive hosts the following command can be used:

Code:

sudo fping -a -q -g 192.168.0.0/24

fping is great tool, almost as cool as hping2
fping needs to be installed. Donwload the latest version, "configure" and "make install" as root. For such purpose you can use "nmap" as well.
nmap sample report as follows :
Use this tools with permission from your network admins, otherwise this may not be appreciated.

Some hosts will respond to a ping sent to the broadcast address of a subnet.

thanks Porter,,

Just an FYI.
Not sure about all, but some AV software packages like Panda Internet Security; Block ICMP Echo Requests.
Puts my mates in a spin, they can see me but can't ping me

Err ... that on a Windows platform.