ping

Sep 25 2009   3:15PM GMT

Performance monitoring dashboard - fping and URL ping

Posted by: Troy Tate
ping, url ping, network performance, application performance, network management, application management, network design, network diagnosis, icmp, web services, webserver, performance analysis

In part one of this series, I discussed ping and pathping. These tools are good for some interactive realtime testing. However, what do you do when you want to run these types of tools over an extended period and then do statistical analysis? In cases like this I use the fping tool. I recently completed an analysis task requiring comparison of network ping times against web server response times. The tool I used for measuring webserver response (time to first byte) is called URL ping. Users were reporting slow webserver (Sharepoint) performance. Everyone was saying it is a network issue. Since there are so many “moving” parts between the users and the webserver farm, I wanted to prove to them that the network was not the issue but that something inherent in the way the webserver responds to the requests is the real issue.

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Aug 28 2009   4:57PM GMT

Performance monitoring dashboard - designing and instrumentation

Posted by: Troy Tate
ping, pathping, network performance, application performance, network management, application management, network design, network diagnosis

One of my biggest challenges as a network manager is when users cry “the network is slow”. Some of you may have tools available to you where you can instantly dig in and see what the user might be seeing. There are some vendors out there with application and network monitoring tools. Netscout is one that comes to mind. However, I don’t have tools like that available so I have to work through several layers of data collection methods and tools to get a picture of what might be happening. Maybe you are in the same boat. Getting an answer to “the network is slow” is not a simple or quick activity. How do you deal with this? Following are some ways that I use to try and address the situation.

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Jan 6 2009   4:45PM GMT

Swiss-army knife for public network testing

Posted by: Troy Tate
toolkit, tools, testing, connectivity testing, website, dns, ping, tracert, icmp, tcp, udp, public network, ssh, SSL, cryptography, crypto, crypto testing, hash, typosquatting

Sometimes it is necessary to test connectivity outside of your private company network. There are several resources I use. I will share a couple of those with you in this posting.

One of my favorite and most frequently used sites is Network-Tools. This website allows you to test Traceroute, PIng, Domain Name Server (DNS) lookup, Whois, and DNS record lookups. This is an excellent resource like DNSTools or DNSStuff.

Another site with useful public internet testing tools is Serversniff.net. You can use this site to perform TCP pings rather than the standard ICMP pings. There is also a step-ping test. This provides the ability to have increasing ping packet sizes to see if there is a bottleneck somewhere before the tested host. There are lots of other tools available on this website. I recommend you check it out and see which offer value to you in your support activities.

Unfortunately, these tools only work from the public internet. You will not be able to test hosts on your private network, but hey, shouldn’t you already have some other testing tools in your toolbag for the private network? I’m sure I will describe more tools as the year moves on.

Thanks for reading & let’s practice safe networking out there! Please feel free to leave comments for other readers so they can adequately support their networks.