[plug] no ping

[Mark O'Shea]

On Sun, 23 May 2004, Mark Saxon wrote:
>
> I would usually just use ping to test if a host was accepting any
> requests or
> if my own ISP had chucked a wobbly.  Which would be more typical.
>
> Mark
>
Well all ping would tell you would be that the host was replying to ICMP
requests.  It tells you nothing about whether the host is accepting TCP on
port 80 (or for that matter replying to HTTP requests on that port), and
this can be hard to find out if your ISP uses a transparent proxy on port
80 (which doesn't just fall back to direct access when the proxy falls
over).  One way to get round this and be able to tell if it's your ISP or
their connectivity to blame is to have a shell account on a machine
outside their network to test what you can see from there.  This is not
always an option though.

I would say that life is too short for always having problems with your
ISP, if they lose connectivity a lot or they impose restrictions on their
network that stop you doing what you want to do then get yourself a new
ISP.

Regards,
-- 
Mark O'Shea