Troubleshooting with extended Ping - A clarification

[Pradeep H A]

Hi all,

In my 5 years of experience in networking I have come across many situations where we use extended ping to troubleshoot erroring serial links. Specifically when we are testing an erroring WIC-1T Serial card with HDLC encapsulation & a remote loop from provider we run a self ping test specifying various data patterns in extended ping tests. But I am always confused with the "Validate reply data" option and haven't seen anybody entering yes to this option!

My Question is if we are not validating reply data how can we confirm the data pattern received is same as the one that was sent? And if we are not saying yes to this option, how useful will that extended ping with all those datapatterns be in troubleshooting intermittent errors?

Hope my problem is clear?

Thanks a lot in advance!

[paolo bevilacqua]

Most ping options are of limited usefulness, and may be have added to cover for corner cases.

[Richard Burts · Accepted solution]

There can be certain issues in provisioning a serial link that are sensitive to certain data patters, especially with lots of repeated zeros, but some other patterns can be problematic. When you use extended ping and specify the various data patterns it will test the line. If there are issues in provisioning this line and you send the right data pattern it will cause the line to drop packets. It is not particularly important to check validate reply data because the issue is not so much that it will change the data pattern but it is more a question of will the line be dropping packets or generating line errors.

HTH

Rick