How can I ping multiple IP addresses at the same time?

If you look into the NMAP project you'll find that it includes additional tools on top of just nmap. One of these tools is nping, which includes the following ability:

Nping has a very flexible and powerful command-line interface that grants users full control over generated packets. Nping's features include:

  • Custom TCP, UDP, ICMP and ARP packet generation.
  • Support for multiple target host specification.
  • Support for multiple target port specification.
  • ...

nping is in the standard EPEL repos to boot.

$ repoquery -qlf nmap.x86_64 | grep nping
/usr/bin/nping
/usr/share/man/man1/nping.1.gz

Usage

To ping multiple servers you merely have to tell nping the names/IPs and which protocol you want to use. Here since we want to mimic what the traditional ping CLI does we'll use ICMP.

$ sudo nping -c 2 --icmp scanme.nmap.org google.com

Starting Nping 0.7.70 ( https://nmap.org/nping ) at 2019-06-14 13:43 EDT
SENT (0.0088s) ICMP [10.3.144.95 > 45.33.32.156 Echo request (type=8/code=0) id=42074 seq=1] IP [ttl=64 id=57921 iplen=28 ]
RCVD (0.0950s) ICMP [45.33.32.156 > 10.3.144.95 Echo reply (type=0/code=0) id=42074 seq=1] IP [ttl=46 id=24195 iplen=28 ]
SENT (1.0091s) ICMP [10.3.144.95 > 45.33.32.156 Echo request (type=8/code=0) id=42074 seq=2] IP [ttl=64 id=57921 iplen=28 ]
SENT (2.0105s) ICMP [10.3.144.95 > 45.33.32.156 Echo request (type=8/code=0) id=42074 seq=2] IP [ttl=64 id=57921 iplen=28 ]
RCVD (2.0107s) ICMP [45.33.32.156 > 10.3.144.95 Echo reply (type=0/code=0) id=42074 seq=2] IP [ttl=46 id=24465 iplen=28 ]
SENT (3.0138s) ICMP [10.3.144.95 > 64.233.177.100 Echo request (type=8/code=0) id=49169 seq=2] IP [ttl=64 id=57921 iplen=28 ]

Statistics for host scanme.nmap.org (45.33.32.156):
 |  Probes Sent: 2 | Rcvd: 2 | Lost: 0  (0.00%)
 |_ Max rtt: 86.053ms | Min rtt: 0.188ms | Avg rtt: 43.120ms
Statistics for host google.com (64.233.177.100):
 |  Probes Sent: 2 | Rcvd: 0 | Lost: 2  (100.00%)
 |_ Max rtt: N/A | Min rtt: N/A | Avg rtt: N/A
Raw packets sent: 4 (112B) | Rcvd: 2 (108B) | Lost: 2 (50.00%)
Nping done: 2 IP addresses pinged in 3.01 seconds

The only drawback I've found with this tool is the use of ICMP mode requiring root privileges.

$ nping -c 2 --icmp scanme.nmap.org google.com
Mode ICMP requires root privileges.

fping is in a Fedora package of the same name, and allows for many hosts, or a set of ip addressses.

$ fping -a -A -c 1 hosta hostb
192.168.0.20 : xmt/rcv/%loss = 1/1/0%, min/avg/max = 0.64/0.64/0.64
192.168.1.3  : xmt/rcv/%loss = 1/1/0%, min/avg/max = 0.50/0.50/0.50

fping will send out a ping packet and move on to the next target in a round-robin fashion... if a target replies, it is noted and removed from the list


oping host1 host2 host3

Description:

oping uses ICMP packages (better known as "ping packets") to test the reachability of network hosts. It supports pinging multiple hosts in parallel using IPv4 and/or IPv6 transparently.

This package contains two command line applications: "oping" is a replacement for tools like ping(1), ping6(1) and fping(1). "noping" is an ncurses-based tool which displays statistics while pinging and highlights aberrant round-trip times.

Tags:

Networking

Ping

Icmp

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