Documentation forSolarWinds

Enhanced Ping tool

Use the Enhanced Ping tool in ETS for the Desktop to continually monitor multiple servers, routers, workstations, or other devices. The tool displays real-time response time information in a ribbon chart, bar chart, column chart, step chart, or area chart.

Open the Enhanced Ping tool

  • To launch the tool from the Toolset Launch Pad, locate the Enhanced Ping tool and click Launch.

  • You can add the tool to a tab in the Workspace Studio, and access it from there.

  • To launch the tool from the Windows Start menu:

    1. Click Start > All > SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset.

    2. Right-click Enhanced Ping, click More, and click Run as administrator.

Specify the nodes to ping

  1. Click Nodes > Edit Nodes. The Add / Delete / Edit Nodes dialog opens.

  2. To add a node, enter the host name or IP address in the lower box, and then click Add Node.

  3. To remove a node, select the host name or IP address in the upper box, and then click Delete Node.

  4. When you have added all the devices you want to monitor with the Enhanced Ping tool, click OK.

    Enhanced Ping displays response time information for the nodes in the selected chart type.

Select the chart type and customize charts

To select the type of chart, click Chart and then click the chart type: 

  • Step Chart
  • Ribbon Chart
  • Area Chart
  • Vertical Bar Chart
  • Horizontal Bar

To display a table of response times below the chart, click Chart > Response Time Table.

To select a different color palette for your chart, click Chart > Palette, and then select a color scheme.

To modify the colors used in the foreground and background of the chart, click Chart > Set Colors.

To view a full set of the customization options, click Chart > Customize, and then modify the chart.

Save and load profiles

To save time, especially if you often monitor the same set of devices with the Enhanced Ping tool, save your current options as a profile. You can quickly load the profile and begin monitoring instead of building a device list each time you start the tool.

Save a new profile

  1. Click File > Save Profile As.

  2. Enter a file name, and click Save.

Save updates to a profile

If you make changes to the devices or settings for a profile, click File > Save Profile to save your changes.

Load a profile

  1. Click File > Load Profile.

  2. Select the profile you want to load, and click Open.

Log statistics

The Enhanced Ping tool can log response times as they are collected. The log file is a plain text file. A new line is added to the log file each time Enhanced Ping checks the response time of each node.

  1. Click Nodes > Settings, and then click the Logging tab.

  2. Check Enable logging of ICMP responses, and then specify a destination and file name for the file in the Log File field.

  3. Click OK.

Export the results

You can export the results of the Enhanced Ping monitoring to a variety of formats and send the exported data to the clipboard, save it as a file, or print it.

  1. Click File > Export wizard.

  2. Select the format:

    • EMF (Enhanced Metafile)
    • WMF (Windows Metafile)
    • BMP
    • JPG
    • PNG
    • Text

  3. Select the destination. If you are exporting to a file, specify the file name and location.

    • Clipboard
    • File
    • Printer

  4. Specify the export size.

  5. Depending on the export destination, click Export or Print.

Reset statistics

You can clear and re-calculate the high and low response time statistics for all nodes:

  • To the high and low response time statistics, click Nodes > Reset High/Low Statistics.

  • To clear all the data and restart monitoring, click Nodes > Reset All Statistics.

Modify polling and packet size settings

You can modify ICMP polling interval, timeout, packet time-to-live, and the data size and contents of the ICMP packet.

  1. Click Nodes > Settings.

  2. Click the Polling tab, and specify the following values:

    Poll Interval How often the Enhanced Ping tool checks the response time of each node.
    ICMP Timeout

    The maximum amount of time in milliseconds that the Enhanced Ping tool will wait for a response from the target IP address. If the target IP address does not respond within the specified number of milliseconds, it is assumed to be down.

    For example, if you expect devices to respond quickly and would like any delays over 300 milliseconds to be flagged as a problem, set the ICMP Timeout to 300 milliseconds. Enhanced Ping then considers ping responses taking longer than 300 milliseconds as lost.
    Packet Time-To-Live The number of hops allowed along the way to the specified address. With a setting of 32, your ping test could pass through up to 32 different routers on the way to the remote address before being discarded by the network.

  3. Click the Packet Size tab, and then specify the data included in the ICMP packet. You can enter additional text in the window to increase the packet size or delete text to reduce the packet size. For most ping tests, only a small amount of data is needed.