SmokePing is a deluxe latency measurement tool. It can measure, store and display latency, latency distribution and packet loss. SmokePing uses RRDtool to maintain a longterm data-store and to draw pretty graphs, giving up to the minute information on the state of each network connection.
Main Features of SmokePing are,
- Measures latency as well as latency variation
- Wide variety of probes, ranging from simple ping to web requests and custom protocols
- Advanced alarm system, triggering on configurable 'latency patterns'
- Master/slave deployment model to run measurments from multiple sources in parallel
- Ajax based graph navigation
- Chart mode, to show the most interesting graphs first.
- Plug-able probes, alarms (matchers) and charting function.
- Written in perl for easy enhancability.
- Fully documented.
- Commandline option
How SmokePing Works
SmokePing sends test packets out to the net and measures the amount of time they need to travel from one place to the other and back.
For every round of measurement smokeping sends several packets. It then sorts the different round trip times and selects the median, (ie. the middle value). This means when there are 10 time values, value number 5 is selected and drawn. The other values are drawn as successively lighter shades of gray in the background (smoke).
Sometimes a test packet is sent out but never returns. This is called packet-loss. The color of the median line changes according to the number of packets lost.
All this information together gives an indication of network health. For example, packet loss is something which should not happen at all. It can mean that a device in the middle of the link is overloaded or a router configuration somewhere is wrong.
Heavy fluctuation of the RTT (round trip time) values also indicate that the network is overloaded. This shows on the graph as smoke; the more smoke, the more fluctuation.
Smokeping is not limited to testing just the roundtrip time of the packets. It can also perform some task at the remote end ("probe"), like download a webpage. This will give a combined 'picture' of webserver availability and network health.
For more information click here
SmokePing can be downloaded from here
There is an online demo for SmokePing here