
The Story of the Ping Program (1997) - teufelsec
https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html
======
FigBug
Mike was killed in a car accident in 2000. Nice to see his website is still up
almost 20 years later.

~~~
ericmcer
I was beaming from that story about the vocoder, that was a fast descent.

I frequently use ping to look like I know what I am doing when trying to fix
connectivity problems.

------
phaemon
The story of ping wouldn't be complete without a link to _that_ book review:
[https://www.amazon.com/review/R2VDKZ4X1F992Q](https://www.amazon.com/review/R2VDKZ4X1F992Q)

~~~
tempguy9999
In fact quoted in the article itself. And very good it is too...

~~~
k_sze
What's very good? The book or the review? _grin_

------
cat199
also the author of brl-cad, fwiw:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRL-CAD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRL-CAD)

here, by a PDP/11 (not sure which person he is):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRL-
CAD#/media/File:Pdp11,70_6...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRL-
CAD#/media/File:Pdp11,70_640x507.jpg)

and mentioned in Clifford Stolls book 'the cuckoos egg' (1989):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg)

which is a complete must read story for anyone interested in this kind of
article and led to much of the current cyber-crime coordination in the US
(e.g. US-CERT, etc).

from that book:

    
    
        "On the heels of Steve's call, Mike Muuss of the Ballistic Research Laboratory called. 
        In Aberdeen, Maryland, the Army runs a research and development laboratory;
        it's one of the last government labs that doesn't farm out its research to private
        contractors. Mike's their computer honcho.
    
        Mike Muuss's famous throughout the Unix community as a pioneer in networking and as a 
        creator of elegant programs to replace awkward ones. As Mike puts it, good programs 
        aren't written or built. They're grown. A six-foot-tall, mustached runner, 
        he's incredibly driven, intense, and obsessed. Mike's paid his dues on ancient 
        versions of Unix, dating back to the '70s. When Mike talks, other wizards listen."
    

RIP.

~~~
cptnapalm
Now, I'm wondering if there's a BRL-CAD around that will still run on a
PDP-11/70 so I have some actual excuse to buy and build the PiDP-11...
[https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11](https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11)

------
kristopher
> Sadly, Mike Muuss was killed in an automobile accident on November 20, 2000.

Thank-you for your work. RIP.

~~~
mushufasa
> My passion at the moment is real-time ray-tracing, with 3-D atmosphere, to
> create a physics-based "virtual reality" simulator.

Wow. Imagine if he were here to experience RTX cards in consumer machines.

------
tempguy9999
There is an unusual (ab)use of ping that I hope no-one here needs but just in
case; I and a tech was doing some dos scripting (in windows) at a client and
we needed short delays. We couldn't find anything in dos, but a web search
suggested an obscure but natty trick - pinging localhost.

ping -n <seconds> 127.0.0.1

It worked (edit: I couldn't stop laughing). To be fair, I've used it and its
big brother traceroute (very useful!) for its designed purpose.

~~~
user5994461

        choice /T 1 /D Y
    

Standard Windows NT command to sleep 1 second. This is actually intended to
let the user select an option Yes/No and default after 1 second without
answer.

------
janci
What was the use of ICMP Echo packets when there was no ping?

~~~
segmondy
"ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) is an error-reporting protocol
network devices like routers use to generate error messages to the source IP
address when network problems prevent delivery of IP packets."

~~~
jolmg
They were asking specifically of Echo packets, though. It seems ping covers
the whole use of them. I wonder if any other part of an OS tends to make Echo
packets.

------
w8rbt
Ping is how I found a compromised server once in a large, poorly wired server
rack. The sys admins were out and the supervisor did not know anything about
the server room (nor did I... the security guy) so he pinged the infected box
from a laptop while I went behind the rack and unplugged each machine one at a
time.... found it after a dozen or so cables. How about now? Yep, that's the
one.

------
chipperyman573
Down but mirrored on google
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lVhbXi...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lVhbXiT-
cCEJ:https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html)

~~~
msla
Longer-lasting archive:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20010107114600/https://ftp.arl.a...](https://web.archive.org/web/20010107114600/https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html)

------
dang
Thread from 2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002380)

2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8443028](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8443028)

2013:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5030309](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5030309)

------
m463
I've always wondered if these foundational utilities could ever evolve a bit.

I'd love to have a "ping --reachable <secs> <host>" that just silently
returned a return code whether a host was pingable.

(of course you could do "ping -w 5 10.0.0.1 >/dev/null 2>&1" but still)

~~~
saati
An nmap pingscan can do that.

------
krossitalk
Sadly the link to the source redirects to the US Army home page now. Anyone
got a link?

~~~
themattress
Looks like it’s fixed. Worked for me:
[https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html](https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html)

~~~
krossitalk
No, the link he provided in the document to the original PING source. It's
supposed to go to
[http://ftp.arl.army.mil/pub/ping.shar](http://ftp.arl.army.mil/pub/ping.shar)
But ends up at
[https://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.cfm](https://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.cfm)

~~~
birdman3131
[https://web.archive.org/web/20041205145144/http://ftp.arl.ar...](https://web.archive.org/web/20041205145144/http://ftp.arl.army.mil/pub/ping.shar)

------
isostatic
I have hundreds of pings running 24/7 from dozens of devices to machines on 6
continents monitoring for packet loss, never even considered the history of
the command

------
aofeisheng
Respect!

------
ChrisArchitect
put a year on this title I think it's from...2000

