pyotr filipivich wrote:



The funniest use of `ping' to date was described in January 1991 by Steve
Hayman on the Usenet group comp.sys.next. He was trying to isolate a faulty
cable segment on a TCP/IP Ethernet hooked up to a NeXT machine, and got
tired of having to run back to his console after each cabling tweak to see
if the ping packets were getting through. So he used the sound-recording
feature on the NeXT, then wrote a script that repeatedly invoked `ping(8)',
listened for an echo, and played back the recording on each returned
packet. Result? A program that caused the machine to repeat, over and over,
"Ping ... ping ... ping ..." as long as the network was up. He turned the
volume to maximum, ferreted through the building with one ear cocked, and
found a faulty tee connector in no time.


From this came all sorts of other uses, but that's the computer related
use

Thanks
Searcher1



That is a great functional use. I used ping and spray. Ping didn't require
the far computer to always be there, some computers could do hardware reply -
which wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to know if the O.S. was running. e.g.
was it booted. I had a script that ping'd and then sprayed (packet size)
and qualify network machines I could use running simulation scripts while the
user worked at a lower priority or during off hours.

It worded so well the larger IT (I was a local IT) group to slurp up that and
enhance it to monitor backbones, bridges and ... the up links and distant T line
connects. We had so many T10 and T100 lines into and out of our facility
I thought we were a network center. Later the IT groups world wide were grouped
into a world wide multiple company IT group in 100 countries.
[ I think our building was a major cluster in the earlier days, then lost the
edge to the comercial centers. ]
Martin


--
Martin Eastburn, Barbara Eastburn
@ home at Lion's Lair with our computer
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder