[smokeping-users] Default ping hosts

[G.W. Haywood]

Hello again,

On Thu, 28 May 2009, Paul Bourke wrote:

> Hmm ok I think the penny may have dropped on this one :)
>
> What I think SmokePing does by default is just ping the local webserver it
> is running on and plots it's stats.  That would also explain the extremely
> small range of my graphs (microseconds instead of milliseconds).

Yes, that would explain it. :)

> So, SmokePing is really only usefull if you have a host that:
>
> 1. Let's you ping them.
> 2. Doesn't mind you pinging them.

Er, obviously. :)

> A little inconvenient, as one of my hopes for SmokePing was that I could see
> the latency of my network before gaming on Xbox Live.

You need to define "my network".  The bit of cable that runs ten feet
from your computer to the telephone socket isn't the issue; it's the
perhaps fifteen to twenty routers between you and some server, and the
quite possibly thousands of miles of cable and fibre between them.  If
you find that the RTTs are too high for your liking, is there anything
you can do about it?  It's no more "my network" than it's "my Internet".

> Though somehow I don't think they would agree with me pinging their
> server's every .3 of a second..

Why would you even want to do that?  I don't think any system
administrator would object to the occasional ping packet checking if a
server is alive, but I'd call that irresponsible.  It wouldn't tell
you a great deal more than pinging them every five or ten minutes, it
could easily get you firewalled, and your provider might start getting
stiff notes about you from some sysadmin.  Like all tools for network
performance monitoring and testing, Smokeping must be used carefully.

> Anyone use it for either of the above services?

Not I.

--

73,
Ged.