Ping is a basic Internet Gopher”.
program that allows for
verification of the Its usefulness in terms of
existence of a particular IP assisting the diagnosis of
address. This is used to ensure connectivity issue in the
that the host computer intended Internet was undermined when
to be reached is actually several Internet service
operating. Recent developments providers filtered out echo
have caused people to abandon request messages at their network
their existing Ping community and boundaries. The use of Ping for
standards which threaten to alter target reconnaissance by Internet
the positive outlook for Ping. worms in locating new hosts to
infect is partly to be blamed.
What is Ping All About? Another factor that might have
contributed to the situation is
In December 1983, Mike Muuss the resulting over all load on
wrote a program used as a tool to networks due to the wide
troubleshoot peculiar behavior on availability of Ping responses.
an IP network. He named it “ping”
after the pulses of sound made by The Ping utility has its unique
a sonar. Its operation is use being essentially a system
considered analogous to active administrator’s tool to determine
sonar in submarines wherein an if a computer is working or if
operator issues a pulse of energy network connections are intact.
at the target which would then Ping uses the Internet Control
bounce back and be received by Message Protocol (ICMP) Echo
the operator. An acronym was function to send a small packet
provided by David Mills to mean through the network to a
“Packet Internet Grouper” and by particular IP address. The
other people as “Packed Internet computer that sent the packet
waits for a return packet. A good sequence numbers and such number
return packet will be received if does not appear again. The
the connections are good and the probable causes for this are a
target computer is up. However, queue that grew too large and
it is indicative of a problem link-level failures. Fluctuating
with the matching of the name and round trip times are caused by
the IP address when a packet the same things responsible for
bounces back. An extended period packet loss. Connectivity that
of time used up for the round comes and goes may be caused by
trip is likewise indicative of a problems in the router.
problem. Ping can also determine
the number of hops that lie The negative creation of the Ping
between two computers and the is the so-called Ping of Death
amount of time it takes for a that essentially crashes a system
packet to make a complete trip. by sending a Ping packet larger
than 65,536 bytes. An IP datagram
There are some things that Ping of this size usually cannot be
cannot tell. Ping may not be able sent but perpetrators apparently
to always provide the reasons why chop the packet into small pieces
packets go unanswered. Neither when it is sent down the line and
can it tell why or where a packet have it rebuilt at its
was damaged, delayed or destination. The sheer size of
duplicated. A detailed the packet causes the buffer to
description of every host that overflow and results to a reboot
handled the packet and the or a hang among others.
details that happened along the
way cannot be provided by Ping. The Ping Outlook
Dropped packets are usually Ping-O-Matic is the only
detected through a skip in the remaining large-scale and
independent Ping relay service exploit the situation.
left with the purchase of href="http://Weblogs.com" There are those that believe that
title="http://Weblogs.com" target="_blank">color="#001000" target="_blank">size="-2">http://Weblogs.comt> by Verisign. The purchase size="-2">http://Weblogs.comhas been received by some t> under Verisign may not be
quarters with skepticism due to the solution to the existing
Verisign’s supposedly checkered problem in the Ping community but
history in the blogosphere. All views it as a start of better
major content producers and things to come. However, there
companies relying on this should be an entity having the
specific Ping stream are resources and the ability to
considerably wary of this move. command respect among the tech
companies being served that would
Weblogs.com was widely perceived run it. The cooperation of those
to be a service that has that have extensive experience
stagnated and a business that has with it can only work to benefit
declined. It is believed to have the community as a whole.
attempted to monetize what should
otherwise be a public service. The bleak outlook of Ping
Users who got frustrated with the persisting at this time can be
situation have chosen to abandon attributed to the fact that it is
their existing Ping community and impossible to leave doors open on
opted to produce their own feeds. the web and not have it abused.
There is a need to get competing The traffic gained by blog
services to work together so that searches can all expect the same
no one gets to successfully spam problems being experienced
by other areas of the web. The abuse it. A redistribution of
problem will only worsen unless trusted Ping feeds by major
some barriers are put into place. players would be ideal but is
It is also very difficult to come almost next to impossible since
up with an algorithmic way to they don’t share web crawling
stop Ping spam. Clearly, the data. Major blog services will
problem is not only about one most probably continue to be
entity purchasing a particular trusted while others might take
service. Pings for third party servers.
Major search players such as Some aver that the real surprise
Google and Yahoo! are expected to is seeing how open pinging has
move to a combination of rapid managed to survive this long.
crawling, trusted Pings and open There are ways to be done to
Pings as a back up. Since they tackle spam such as through the
are able to get news content very machine learning algorithm and
fast, they can concentrate on the like. It would probably be
spidering and hammering their best to open the Pings up to the
trusted sites. They know the community and let them fix it.
major blogs that really matter
and be able to discover links Technorati, Bloglines and
from blogs as quickly as Feedster are all closed systems
possible. and Pings sent to them are only
available to their service. Some
Another way is to have people are hoping to see an open system
enroll to come up with trusted of notification and proposes
Pings. Proper identification Feedmaster to achieve it. It
through signing up can be used to hopes to allow a wide variety of
determine whose Pings are to be new services to be able to focus
taken in and penalize those who on getting into the stream of
updates. At present, the various individually as competitors and
players are still actively as common participants in one
participating but whether or not community.
there is indeed a future for Ping
would depend on how they act
About the Author:
http://www.theinternetone.net
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