echoping was a small program to test (approximatively) performances of a remote host by sending it requests such as HTTP requests.
echoping is no longer maintained.
To use it, simply:
% echoping machine.somewhere.org
or use the options before the machine name (see the man page).
See the DETAILS file for various traps when benchmarking networks, specially with this program.
In any case, be polite: don't bother the remote host with many repeated requests, especially with large size. Ask for permission if you often test hosts which aren't yours.
Current features:
* plugins, so you can extend echoping with any protocol you like and/or use,
* Supports IPv6 as well as IPv4,
* Supports IDN (Unicode domain names like café.gennic.net),
* uses the protocols echo, discard, chargen or HTTP,
* can use cryptographic connections with HTTP,
* uses UDP instead of TCP for the protocols which accept it (like echo),
* can repeat the test and display various measures about it, Examples of output:
(Simple test with 1000 bytes echo TCP packets)
% echoping -v -s 1000 mycisco
This is echoping, version 5.0.0.
Trying to connect to internet address 172.21.0.14 7 to transmit 1000 bytes...
Connected...
TCP Latency: 0.003165 seconds
Sent (1000 bytes)...
Application Latency: 0.322183 seconds
1000 bytes read from server.
Checked
Elapsed time: 0.326960 seconds
(Repeated tests with average / mean and median displayed.)
% echoping -n 10 faraway-machine
[...]
Minimum time: 6.722336 seconds (38 bytes per sec.)
Maximum time: 17.975060 seconds (14 bytes per sec.)
Average time: 10.873267 seconds (24 bytes per sec.)
Standard deviation: 3.102793
Median time: 9.218506 seconds (28 bytes per sec.)
(Testing a Web server with an HTTP request for its home page.)
% echoping -h / mywww
Elapsed time: 0.686792 seconds
The exit status is set if there is any problem, so you can use echoping to test repeatedly a Web server, to be sure it runs fine (SmokePing does it).