
The story of the Ping program (2001) - federicoponzi
http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html
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jdcarter
I remember reading that Amazon review of "The Story About Ping" shortly after
it was published. Still a classic to this day. Excerpt: _...The Story About
Ping has earned a place on my bookshelf, right between Stevens ' Advanced
Programming in the Unix Environment, and my dog-eared copy of Dante's seminal
work on MS Windows, Inferno. Who can read that passage on the Windows API
("Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous, So that by fixing on its depths my
sight -- Nothing whatever I discerned therein."), without shaking their head
with deep understanding. But I digress._

I still laugh reading it--truly satire at its finest.

~~~
gumby
> I remember reading that Amazon review of "The Story About Ping" shortly
> after it was published...

I think you mean "shortly after it appeared on Amazon" since the book was old
when I was a kid in the 1960s, pre Internet and pre Amazon.

(Or your commend extends the April 1 tradition, which is cool).

~~~
jdcarter
Sorry, I meant "shortly after the review was published," not the book. In fact
"The Story About Ping" was a favorite children's book of mine when I was young
(in the '70s) and I still have that copy.

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aluminussoma
One thing I never knew about ping is that if you ping a broadcast address,
then all hosts will respond! But for some operating systems (windows I
think?), you need a packet capture to see this. It's been useful when probing
around unknown networks.

I only found that out by reading the source code. It was part of a short-lived
attempt to become a better hacker by familiarizing myself with the Linux
source code, kernel and all. The more I learn, the more impossible it seems to
ever master it all...

~~~
13of40
At one of my first corporate jobs about 20 years ago, I noticed that "nslookup
x.y.z.255" actually resolved to a host. I tried to ping it, but got
nothing...until I got a phone call from security about why a malicious
broadcast ping came from my desktop machine.

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ra1n85
Read this some time ago - amazed at how something as ubiquitous as ping
started so humbly. Very unfortunate that Muuss passed in 2000.

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MarkMc
Interesting that the 'Ping' link to Amazon.com is still working. I wonder if
it will still be working in 100 years.

~~~
leipert
Well if Amazon is still around in 100 years, probably, as the link uses a ASIN
[1] which can be converted to an EAN [2] or is equal to 10 digit IBANs

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

[2]: [http://erwinmayer.com/labs/asin2ean/index.php#EAN-to-
ASIN](http://erwinmayer.com/labs/asin2ean/index.php#EAN-to-ASIN)

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dang
A couple of previous discussions among
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20story%20of%20the%20Ping%...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20story%20of%20the%20Ping%20program&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

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cenan
Today's online ping program
[http://pingspeedtest.com/](http://pingspeedtest.com/)

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windlessstorm
The link seems to be down.

~~~
a3n
2 hours after reading your comment that HN tells me was 2 hours ago in the
hour that I read it, the links seems to be up. :)

