Periodic Ping

Periodic Ping

This feature when enabled executes background ping from the print server to its default gateway. The operation is executed on every user defined period. This mechanism has no TCP traffic from the print server to anything on the network to keep route information alive. Since every member in the VLAN is subject to aging from bridging cache, a switch or bridge in between may be forgotten in the table at which port the printer was connected. If one ping is run from printer server to its default gateway through the switch, the switch learns again and the route is seen. The problem will not be seen with TCP since the ACKs keep the bridge relearning in a switch. Periodically send ICMP Echo Request between a print server and its gateway that is typically situated in the same VLAN and connected with the same switch or bridge.

The printer server allows a periodic group of ping packets [1 – 5] to be issued by a set time [1– 5] minutes, to the gateway value the NIC has from its routing table. This feature can be enabled or disabled. The default is disable.

This periodic ping is different from the normal ping process. The purpose of this ping is not an attempt at dead gateway detection. There is no ping client created in the print server and the ICMP Echo Reply packets received from the gateway are deleted without being processed by the ping client. This reduces the processing load on the print server. The data size of ICMP Echo Request Message is set to 16 bytes such that the Ethernet frame is set to 64 bytes to minimize the impact of bandwidth on the network. This process applies to all the active NIC interfaces.

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