
The Story of the PING Program (1997) - julien421
http://ftp.arl.mil/mike/ping.html
======
thefarcry118
Sadly the author of ping, Mike Muss, died in a car accident in 2000. [1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Muuss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Muuss)

~~~
swartkrans
What a waste. Such talent and skill destroyed in an instant, forever.

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lbenes
Am I the only one that finds the MS Windows ping more useful for quick
troubleshooting that the Linux/Unix variants? A few weeks ago I was dealing
poor performance on my cable modem. When I pinged a valid IP, I was seeing the
successful packets only. It didn't show time-out packets until the summary
displayed on exit. This makes it useless for quick real-time monitoring. MS
ping on the other hand will show time-outs along with the successful ones.

Why is Linux ping this way? Is this a fundamental design flaw?

~~~
switch007
'oping' fixes that issue:

    
    
      $ oping msn.com
      PING msn.com (23.101.196.141) 56 bytes of data.
      echo reply from msn.com (23.101.196.141): icmp_seq=1 timeout
      echo reply from msn.com (23.101.196.141): icmp_seq=2 timeout
      echo reply from msn.com (23.101.196.141): icmp_seq=3 timeout
    

Also, in standard ping, you can type Ctrl+\ (sends the QUIT signal) to get an
update, e.g.

    
    
      $ ping msn.com
      PING msn.com (23.101.196.141) 56(84) bytes of data.
      <<< Ctrl+\ >>>
      7/0 packets, 100% loss

~~~
Moru
ctrl+break does the same on windows ping.

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PeterWhittaker
I loved the bit about piping ping through sed through vocoder, playing it on
the stereo at 11, and finding the network fault by seeing which wiggled
connector caused silence.

~~~
Intermernet
A coworker and I once did a similar thing (Just a beep, no vocoder) to isolate
a faulty switch. This switch had been causing horrible problems (data
corruption style) for weeks and we just couldn't find it.

It's the only time I've ever seen my friend violent or aggressive. Upon find
the switch he calmly unplugged everything, and then threw the switch at a
concrete wall. I understood the sentiment.

------
currysausage
The Amazon review by "A reader from Upper Volta, Uzbekistan" is priceless.

------
swartkrans
What software could someone write today and finish in an evening that would be
as widely known and useful as PING is?

~~~
th3byrdm4n
twitter? _rimshot_

~~~
Moru
Twitter is not known because of what it can do but because marketing

------
Jonhoo
For those who want to reproduce the ping example, get espeak and run:

    
    
      ping mit.edu | sed -u 's/.*/ping/' | espeak

~~~
Jonhoo

      ping mit.edu | sed -u 's/.*/ping pong/' | espeak
    

is even funnier...

------
RegW
I remember years ago the SunOS documentation used to have a ping joke:
[http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19504-01/802-5753/6i9g71m4p/index...](http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19504-01/802-5753/6i9g71m4p/index.html)

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TheCoreh
The following command will work on OS X and do the voice ping:

    
    
        ping google.com | sed -l -e 's/.*/ping/' | while read line; do say $line; done
    

The `while read line ...` is required because the `say(1)` command will wait
for an EOF when reading from a non-TTY... so it won't speak line by line.

------
axelf1212
Dr. A-hole says: Shouldn't the comment on line 283 say "Whom to ping"?

struct sockaddr whereto;/* Who to ping */

