check_ping vs. check_icmp?

[Andrew Laden]

How does using check_icmp compare to using check_fping?

It seems that check_fping will return a down answer much faster. Since host
checks are most often run when the host is down, that seems to be the
performance that we are concerned with.

# time ./check_fping -H em1.dra.tudor.com
FPING CRITICAL - em1.dra.tudor.com (loss=100% )|loss=100%;;;0;100
    0.52s real     0.00s user     0.01s system
# time ./check_icmp  -H em1.dra.tudor.com
CRITICAL - em1.dra.tudor.com: rta nan, lost
100%|rta=0.000ms;200.000;500.000;0; pl=100%;40;80;; 
    2.96s real     0.00s user     0.00s system

-----Original Message-----
From: Nate Carlson [mailto:nagios at natecarlson.com] 
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2005 1:16 PM
To: Andreas Ericsson
Cc: 'nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net'
Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] check_ping vs. check_icmp?

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            |
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