Fping – A Command-Line Tool to Ping Hosts In Parallel on Ubuntu

Fping is a program to send ICMP echo probes to network hosts, it is similar to ping hence, it allows users to check if a remote host is up or down.Using Fping command, we can check multiple hosts at a time. This article describes “How to install Fping command and uses of Fping command”

Installing Fping command

To install Fping command, use the following command –

$ sudo apt-get install fping

The sample output should be like this –

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
   gtk2-engines-pixbuf libbs2b0 libopusfile0 libpyside1.2 libqmmp-misc
   libqmmpui0 libshiboken1.2 libsidplayfp libtidy-0.99-0 linux-headers-4.2.0-27
   linux-headers-4.2.0-27-generic linux-image-4.2.0-27-generic
   linux-image-extra-4.2.0-27-generic linux-signed-image-4.2.0-27-generic
   php7.0-opcache python-beautifulsoup python-feedparser python-html2text
   python-magic python-oauth2 python-pyside.qtcore python-pyside.qtgui
   python-pyside.qtnetwork python-pyside.qtwebkit python-pysqlite2 python-regex
   python-sqlalchemy python-sqlalchemy-ext python-support python-unity-singlet
   python-utidylib
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following NEW packages will be installed:
   fping
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 30.7 kB of archives.
.........................................................

Usage of Fping command

To run Fping, use the following command –

$ fping tutorialspoint.com

The sample output should be like this –

tutorialspoint.com is alive

To test multiple sites, use the following command –

$ fping www.tutorialspoint.com www.google.com

The sample output should be like this –

www.tutorialspoint.com is alive
www.google.com is alive

If host list are stored in a file, use the following command –

$ fping < hosts.txt

The sample output should be like this –

www.tutorialspoint.com is alive
www.google.com is alive

To get more information about fping, use the following command –

$ fping -help

The sample output should be like this –

Usage: fping [options] [targets...]
-a    show targets that are alive
-A    show targets by address
-b n  amount of ping data to send, in bytes (default 56)
-B f  set exponential backoff factor to f
-c n  count of pings to send to each target (default 1)
-C n  same as -c, report results in verbose format
-D    print timestamp before each output line
-e    show elapsed time on return packets
-f    file read list of targets from a file ( - means stdin) (only if no -g specified)
-g    generate target list (only if no -f specified)
         (specify the start and end IP in the target list, or supply a IP netmask)
         (ex. fping -g 192.168.1.0 192.168.1.255 or fping -g 192.168.1.0/24)
-H n  Set the IP TTL value (Time To Live hops)
-i n  interval between sending ping packets (in millisec) (default 25)
-l    loop sending pings forever
-m    ping multiple interfaces on target host
-n    show targets by name (-d is equivalent)
-p n  interval between ping packets to one target (in millisec)
         (in looping and counting modes, default 1000)
-q    quiet (don't show per-target/per-ping results)
-Q n  same as -q, but show summary every n seconds
-r n  number of retries (default 3)
-s    print final stats
-I    if bind to a particular interface
-S    addr set source address
-t n  individual target initial timeout (in millisec) (default 500)
-T n  ignored (for compatibility with fping 2.4)
-u    show targets that are unreachable
-O n  set the type of service (tos) flag on the ICMP packets
-v    show version
targets list of targets to check (if no -f specified)

Congratulations! Now, you know “How to install Fping tool and usage of Fping tool on Linux”. We’ll learn more about these types of commands in our next Linux post. Keep reading!