check_ping vs. check_icmp?

[Andreas Ericsson]

Nate Carlson wrote:
> What's the difference between check_ping and check_icmp?
> 

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.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson at op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231


-------------------------------------------------------
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