this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Hello! I'm trying to ping some lemmy instances to understand which one is the faster, so I'm just using the ping command:

$ ping lemmy.ml
PING lemmy.ml (54.36.178.108) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from lemmy.ml (54.36.178.108): icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=24.4 ms

ping lemmy.world
PING lemmy.world (135.181.143.230) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from static.230.143.181.135.clients.your-server.de (135.181.143.230): icmp_seq=1 ttl=52 time=58.2 ms

but if I try with certain instances:

ping vlemmy.net
PING vlemmy.net (109.78.160.70) 56(84) bytes of data.




it just hangs there, forever. if I try to ctrl+C it, it displays

^C
***
vlemmy.net ping statistics
***
13 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 12267ms

why does this happens? I can perfectly visit vlemmy.net from my browser so I really can't understand whay is this happening

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[–] MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

One possibility is that the server is configured not to respond to pings

[–] worldofbirths@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

This is most likely the issue. Maybe just measure HTTP response times instead?

[–] tubbadu@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

what advantages can derive from this?

ICMP is one vector of a distributed denial of service attack. Also, even if not denying the service, it puts load on the network interfaces / routers of that server - everything behind the first firewall / router layer that would otherwise block the ICMP requests.

[–] SirMrR4M@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Prevents some types of port scanning normally. Don't know about other advantages

[–] maynarkh@feddit.nl 1 points 1 year ago

Adding to the other answers, there isa bunch of server software that comes preconfigured to ignore ICMP.

[–] MaxPower@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

ping nowadays is overrated anyway. If a server responds to ICMP and how fast it does it does not really say much about "how fast" a website is. It only tells you that a) ICMP requests and responses are not blocked and b) how fast ICMP requests get answered.

That's it. It may not even tell you that a website is online because a load balancer may be responding to the ICMP request while the hosts behind it are offline.

People value ping responses way too highly.

httping may be a better tool to measure "how fast" a website is responding.

[–] Sebito@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also every major browser has a tool for timing and seing how long a site and it's components load. You could test it with that but even then; load times will vary slightly depending on what the instances have to load.

But probably a better way than pings ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[–] MaxPower@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Correct, especially with all the dynamic loading and rendering websites nowadays do measuring in a web browser is waaay better than doing ICMP/ping requests or even httping requests.

It depends on what you are trying to measure ofc but ICMP/ping does not tell you almost anything about how fast a website is.

[–] tubbadu@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

httping may be a better tool to measure “how fast” a website is responding.

this works well, thank you! the results are similar to the ones obtained with ping, but vlemmy.net and other instances that ping couldn't reach are correctly measured. seems that lemm.ee is the fastest for me

[–] spark431@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Ping is still very good because IMCP it is built into almost all network interfaces. So it it is a great tool if you want to check if a host is reachable from the device. But yeah, it is different than anything that has to do with websites.

[–] FrostyPolicy@suppo.fi 1 points 1 year ago

There's a firewall blocking ICMP echo-reply requests on the other end. It's totally normal for servers to block ping requests.

[–] qprimed@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

ICMP echo requests/responses may be blocked - usually by a remote endpoint firewall.

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