This How To explaing how to use Extended Ping and Extended Traceroute options in Cisco IOS.
Extended Ping
The ping command is just about as simple as it gets when it comes to troubleshooting. Ping is actually ICMP. ICMP sends a encho request to a particular address and, if present, that device send back an echo reply. In other words, it asks, “Are you there?” and waits for a response. However, there is a lot more to ping if you use the Cisco IOS extended version.
There are a lot of assumptions and default settings in the standard version of ping. Extended ping allows you, the network admin, to see and determine every option that you want to specify for your ping test. For example, here are some of the many options that you can specify with extended ping:
- Protocols: While 99 percent of the time you will use IP, most admins don’t know that you can do an AppleTalk, CLNS, Novell, or other type of ping with extended ping.
- Repeat count: How many pings do you want to send? The default is five with standard ping, but you could send 999 with extended ping. Perhaps your network is having trouble periodically — you could test this with extended ping.
- Datagram size: While the default is to send a 100-byte ping, with extended ping you could send very large ping packets. Perhaps your network is having trouble with large data transfers.
- Timeout: The default timeout is two seconds but you could allow ping to wait much longer for a reply if you choose to do so.
- Source interface: I think this is very important — you can specify the source of your ping because, otherwise, the receiving router may not be able to see all interfaces of your router and your standard ping may fail.
- Loose, Strict, Record, Timestamp, Verbose: You can specify these options to gain additional information about your ping tests such as forcing the ping to take a strict path through the network.
Here is an example of an extended ping:
Cell_Router# ping
Protocol [ip]:
Target IP address: 10.10.10.10
Repeat count [5]: 10
Datagram size [100]: 1000
Timeout in seconds [2]:
Extended commands [n]: y
Source address or interface: 2.2.2.2
Type of service [0]:
Set DF bit in IP header? [no]:
Validate reply data? [no]:
Data pattern [0xABCD]:
Loose, Strict, Record, Timestamp, Verbose[none]:
Sweep range of sizes [n]:
Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 1000-byte ICMP Echos to 2.2.2.2, timeout is 2 seconds:
!!!!!!!!!!
Success rate is 100 percent (10/10), round-trip min/avg/max = 20/98/157 ms
Cell_Router#
You can actually perform an extended ping, all on the command line, like this:
ping ip 10.10.10.10 data 0000 repeat 500 size 18000 verbose
Also, to break out of an extended ping or traceroute, you can press [Ctrl]+[Shift]6.
Extended Traceroute
Just as you can use the extended ping command to determine what kind of connectivity problems you’re having, you can use the extended traceroute command to narrow down where the problem is happening. The basic traceroute command tests for the same thing as ping, but its benefit is that it lists the routers at each hop of the route to the destination. Extended traceroute goes much further with allowing you to tweak how it works.
Here is an example:
Router# traceroute 10.10.10.10
Source address: 10.20.20.20
Numeric display [n]:
Timeout in seconds [4]:
Probe count [3]:
Minimum Time to Live [1]:
Maximum Time to Live [30]:
Port Number [33434]:
Loose, Strict, Record, Timestamp, Verbose[none]:
Type escape sequence to abort.
Tracing the route to 10.10.10.10
1 10.10.10.1 16 msec 16 msec 16 msec
2 10.10.10.2 28 msec 28 msec 32 msec
3 10.20.20.20 32 msec 28 msec *
We hope this quick how to will encourage you to be more advanced when using Ping and Traceroute. If you want to dive deeper, start here with this Cisco article on extended ping and extended traceroute.