fping is a ping like program which uses the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request to determine if a host is up. fping is different from ping in that you can specify any number of hosts on the command line, or specify a file containing the lists of hosts to ping. Instead of trying one host until it timeouts or replies, fping will send out a ping packet and move on to the next host in a round-robin fashion. If a host replies, it is noted and removed from the list of hosts to check. If a host does not respond within a certain time limit and/or retry limit it will be considered unreachable. Unlike ping, fping is meant to be used in scripts and its output is easy to parse.
SYNOPSIS
fping [ options ] [ systems… ]
OPTIONS
-a Show systems that are alive.
-d Use DNS to lookup address of return ping packet. This allows you to
give fping a list of IP addresses as input and print hostnames in
the output.
-e Show elapsed (round-trip) time of packets
-f Read list of system from a file. This option can only be used by
the root user. Regular users should pipe in the file via stdin:
fping < targets_file
-g Generate a target list from a supplied IP netmask, or a starting
and ending IP. Specify the netmask or start/end in the targets
portion of the command line.
ex. To ping the class C 192.168.1.x, the specified command
line could look like either:
fping -g 192.168.1.0/24
or
fping -g 192.168.1.0 192.168.1.255
-in The minimum amount of time (in milliseconds) between sending a ping
packet to any host (default is 10).
-q Quiet. Don't show per host results, just set final exit status.
-rn Retry limit (default 3). This is the number of times an attempt at
pinging a host will be made, not including the first try.
-s Dump final statistics.
-tn Individual host timeout in milliseconds (default 2500). This is the
minimum number of milliseconds between ping packets directed
towards a given host.
-u Show systems that are unreachable. fping a list of IP addresses as
input and have the results printed as hostnames.
Examples:
$ fping -g 10.201.71.0/24
10.201.71.1 is alive
10.201.71.17 is alive
10.201.71.30 is alive
10.201.71.48 is alive
10.201.71.50 is alive
10.201.71.60 is alive
10.201.71.61 is alive
10.201.71.87 is alive
10.201.71.122 is alive
10.201.71.141 is alive
10.201.71.169 is alive
10.201.71.200 is alive
10.201.71.241 is alive
10.201.71.129 is alive
10.201.71.163 is alive
10.201.71.173 is alive
10.201.71.176 is alive
10.201.71.180 is alive
10.201.71.181 is alive
.......
$ fping -d google.com yahoo.com digg.com reddit.com
google.com is alive
yahoo.com is alive
digg.com is alive
reddit.com is alive
