ATPING (1M)ATPING

NAME

atping - send AppleTalk Echo Protocol (AEP) Request packets

SYNOPSIS

atping [ -dsec ] net.node [packetsize [count]]

DESCRIPTION

atping is intended for use in network testing, measurement, and management, primarily for manual fault isolation. Tracking a single-point hardware or software failure in an AppleTalk network can often be difficult. atping uses the AppleTalk Echo Protocol (AEP) Request packet to elicit an AEP Reply from a host or gateway equipped with an Echoer process attached to the statically assigned socket number

4.Because of the load it could impose on the network, hosts, and gateways, atping should not be used during normal operations and it should not be used from automated scripts.

To use atping for fault isolation, the AppleTalk address of the target node must be specified in net.host format. It is also possible to contact routers on networks OTHER THAN that to which the LCS60 is attached by specifying a zero node, as in net.0 (Refer to Inside AppleTalk, p. 4-7). It is not possible to contact the AppleTalk addresses that correspond to the LCS60's virtual network port or to its Ethernet port.

By default, atping sends an AppleTalk data packet that is 64 bytes long. The first byte is always the AEP header; this is followed by a time stamp. The remainder of the packet is padded with additional bytes to fill out the packet. The size of the packet, in bytes, may be changed by specifying an alternate packetsize on the command line.

By default, atping sends one packet per second and prints one line of output showing the round trip time for every packet sent. The delay between packets (in seconds) can be changed by specifying the argument to the -doption on the command line. Since a packet for which no reply has been received by the time the next packet is sent is declared "lost", it may be necessary to use -dto increase the inter-packet delay to communicate with hosts over slow networks, such as dial-up connections over the virtual network.

By default, atping continues to send packets until it is killed. If count is specified on the command line, atping will send the specified number of Echo Requests, and then exit. Summary round trip time and packet loss statistics are displayed just before atping exits.

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Issue 3