check_ping vs. check_icmp?

Nate Carlson nagios at natecarlson.com
Fri Oct 14 19:15:50 CEST 2005


On Fri, 14 Oct 2005, Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> check_ping executes the external command ping, while check_icmp does its 
> own fiddling with the ICMP protocol. As a result, check_icmp is faster, 
> smarter and requires less resources to run.
>
> check_icmp can also be used in check_host mode (create a symlink 
> check_host -> check_icmp and execute check_host) which runs extremely 
> quickly to determine if a host is up whenever a service check fails. 
> Ordinary check_ping would take 5 seconds to determine that the host is 
> up in an ordinary setup, while check_host usually does the same trick in 
> just about the same amount of time as it takes for a packet to make a 
> round trip to the destination target (usually between 1 and 10 
> milliseconds on a local network).
>
> Considering the fact that service checks aren't executed while host 
> checks are running, the check_host mode of check_icmp is a fairly major 
> improvement in terms of overall Nagios performance.

In other words, check_icmp is certainly worth making the change.  :)

Thanks - I'll grab the newest version of the plugin pack you mention in 
later messages, and make the cut!

------------------------------------------------------------------------
| nate carlson | natecars at natecarlson.com | http://www.natecarlson.com |
|       depriving some poor village of its idiot since 1981            |
------------------------------------------------------------------------


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by:
Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions,
and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl
_______________________________________________
Nagios-users mailing list
Nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users
::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. 
::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null





More information about the Users mailing list