[TriLUG] OT: Amiable ping target

[Brian Henning]

Joseph Mack NA3T wrote:
> A common problem. Unfortunately the RFCs say that ping is not to be used 
> (at least continuously) for connectivity checking. 

Which RFC says that?  I'm not contradicting you; I just want to read it 
and learn more. (-:  So far, I've only found some generic stuff that 
doesn't specifically mention when (and when not) to use ICMP ECHO:

RFC 792  - ICMP
RFC 2151 - A Primer on Internet and TCP/IP Tools and Utilities

Kevin Otte wrote:
> sntop (http://sntop.sf.net/): Set up a config file (3 lines per host: short
> name, ip/hostname, description) and it continually gives host status in
> 'top' style.  Can even produce HTML output.
> 
> Both are available as Debian packages (and thus likely Ubuntu as well). 


Ooo, looks interesting.  Although I was sort of looking forward to 
flexing my C++ skills a bit (just for the heck of it, instead of using 
something like Perl...no interpreter, [hopefully] smaller process 
footprint). :-)  Nothing like a sideline programming project to make a 
dull job a little more bearable.

Cheers and thanks,
~Brian