Is it possible to ping an address:port?

I am not into networking, and I have the following question related to the Linux ping command.

Can I only ping an address? For example:

miner@raspberrypi ~ $ ping onofri.org PING onofri.org (67.222.36.105) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from onofri.org (67.222.36.105): icmp_req=1 ttl=47 time=202 ms 64 bytes from onofri.org (67.222.36.105): icmp_req=2 ttl=47 time=206 ms 64 bytes from onofri.org (67.222.36.105): icmp_req=3 ttl=47 time=215 ms 

Or can I also ping an address:port, for example: onofri.org:80?

If I try this one it doesn't work:

miner@raspberrypi ~ $ ping onofri.org:80 ping: unknown host onofri.org:80 

Is it possible ping something like address:port? If it is possible, why doesn't what I tried work?

11 Answers

You can use Paping, a cross-platform TCP port testing, emulating the functionality of ping (port ping)

(see also Github as code.google.com has been depreciated)

paping -p 80 google.com 

Ports are a concept of UDP and TCP. Ping messages are technically referred to as ICMP Echo Request and ICMP Echo Reply which are part of ICMP. ICMP, TCP, and UDP are "siblings"; they are not based on each other, but are three separate protocols that run on top of IP.

Therefore you can not ping a port. What you can do, is use a port scanner like nmap.

nmap -p 80 onofri.org 

You can also use telnet onofri.org 80, as suggested in one of the other answers (It will give an error if the port is closed or filtered).

I use Telnet, since its built into lots of platforms with no additional downloads.

Just use the telnet command to connect to the port you want to test. If you get the message below, or a message from the service itself, then the port is alive.

Minty16 ~ $ telnet localhost 139 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. 

If you know the command sequence for the service you are connecting to, you can type a command (HTTP/FTP GET for instance) and observe the response and output in the terminal. This is very useful for testing the service itself, as it will show you error information sent to the client, like HTTP 500 errors.

If you get a message that the connection was refused, the port is closed.

Minty16 ~ $ telnet localhost 5000 Trying 127.0.0.1... telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused 

Yes, use HPing to do that:

$ sudo hping -S -p 80 google.com HPING google.com (p5p1 77.237.27.37): S set, 40 headers + 0 data bytes len=46 ip=77.237.27.37 ttl=58 id=25706 sport=80 flags=SA seq=0 win=29200 rtt=7.5 ms len=46 ip=77.237.27.37 ttl=58 id=25707 sport=80 flags=SA seq=1 win=29200 rtt=7.4 ms len=46 ip=77.237.27.37 ttl=58 id=25708 sport=80 flags=SA seq=2 win=29200 rtt=8.5 ms len=46 ip=77.237.27.37 ttl=58 id=25709 sport=80 flags=SA seq=3 win=29200 rtt=7.8 ms ^C --- google.com hping statistic --- 4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max = 7.4/7.8/8.5 ms 

Note that it needs root privileges (or SELinux capabilities) to create raw IP packets, just like ping (which is most likely suid on your system).

You can use netcat to connect to a specific port to see if you get a connection. The -v flag will increase the verbosity to show whether the port is open or closed. The -z flag will cause netcat to quit once it has a connection. You can then use the exit codes through $? to see whether or not the connection was established or not.

$ nc -zv localhost 22 localhost [127.0.0.1] 22 (ssh) open $ echo $? 0 $ nc -zv localhost 23 localhost [127.0.0.1] 23 (telnet) : Connection refused $ echo $? 1 

Additionally, you can use mtr with the -T flag for tcp and the -P flag to specify a port. This will do something similar to a traceroute over TCP instead of just ICMP. This may be overkill, however.

sigh I have to edit to add this bit, since we cannot put code in comments. Knoppix may being doing something different with its version of netcat, but this is what I get off of Linux Mint

$ date;nc -z -w 1 8000;date Fri Jun 20 15:55:26 PDT 2014 Fri Jun 20 15:55:27 PDT 2014 $ date;nc -z -w 4 8000;date Fri Jun 20 15:55:33 PDT 2014 Fri Jun 20 15:55:37 PDT 2014 $ nc -h [v1.10-40] 

You could also use nping (part of nmap):

$ nping -p 80 localhost Starting Nping 0.6.00 ( ) at 2014-06-23 11:57 CEST SENT (0.0015s) Starting TCP Handshake > localhost:80 (127.0.0.1:80) RECV (0.0016s) Handshake with localhost:80 (127.0.0.1:80) completed SENT (1.0027s) Starting TCP Handshake > localhost:80 (127.0.0.1:80) RECV (1.0027s) Handshake with localhost:80 (127.0.0.1:80) completed SENT (2.0038s) Starting TCP Handshake > localhost:80 (127.0.0.1:80) RECV (2.0039s) Handshake with localhost:80 (127.0.0.1:80) completed SENT (3.0050s) Starting TCP Handshake > localhost:80 (127.0.0.1:80) RECV (3.0050s) Handshake with localhost:80 (127.0.0.1:80) completed SENT (4.0061s) Starting TCP Handshake > localhost:80 (127.0.0.1:80) RECV (4.0062s) Handshake with localhost:80 (127.0.0.1:80) completed Max rtt: 0.032ms | Min rtt: 0.008ms | Avg rtt: 0.012ms TCP connection attempts: 5 | Successful connections: 5 | Failed: 0 (0.00%) Tx time: 4.00575s | Tx bytes/s: 99.86 | Tx pkts/s: 1.25 Rx time: 4.00575s | Rx bytes/s: 49.93 | Rx pkts/s: 1.25 Nping done: 1 IP address pinged in 4.01 seconds 

You can do this in the shell with Python as a not so short one liner:

$ portping() { python <<<"import socket; socket.setdefaulttimeout(1); socket.socket().connect(('$1', $2))" 2> /dev/null && echo OPEN || echo CLOSED; } $ portping 8.8.8.8 54 CLOSED $ portping 8.8.8.8 53 OPEN 

Just for reference, wanted to share a post by Vivek Gite:

He lists various ways, some of which are already posted here. But the most surprising for me was nothing more but bash:

(echo >/dev/tcp/{host}/{port}) &>/dev/null && echo "opened" || echo "closed" (echo >/dev/udp/{host}/{port}) &>/dev/null && echo "opened" || echo "closed" (echo >/dev/tcp/) &>/dev/null && echo "Opened 22" || echo "Closed 22" (echo >/dev/tcp/) &>/dev/null && echo "Opened 443" || echo "Closed 443" 

Or a super simple version: just looking at the output of the following command pattern:

echo >/dev/{tcp|udp}/{host}/{port} 

Useful when working with random docker containers.

It is simple with nmap

examples:

#sintaxis nmap -p [port] hostName #first is command, after scan ports, type port - port or range ports, and ip or name of website... ## Scan port 80 nmap -p 80 onofri.org ## Scan TCP port 80 nmap -p T:80 onofri.org ## Scan UDP port 53 nmap -p U:53 onofri.org ## Scan two ports ## nmap -p 80,443 onofri.org ## Scan port ranges ## nmap -p 80-200 onofri.org ## Combine all options ## nmap -p U:53,111,137,T:21-25,80,139,8080 onofri.org nmap -p U:53,111,137,T:21-25,80,139,8080 server1.cyberciti.biz nmap -v -sU -sT -p U:53,111,137,T:21-25,80,139,8080 onofri.org ## Scan all ports with * wildcard ## nmap -p "*" 192.168.1.1 ## Scan top ports i.e. scan $number most common ports ## nmap --top-ports 5 onofri.org nmap --top-ports 10 onofri.org 

For more information see this:

type in command line this: man nmap

I add watch tool here:

watch nmap -p22,80 google.com

Every 2,0s: nmap -p22,80 google.com Mon Jun 15 16:46:33 2015 Starting Nmap 6.40 ( ) at 2015-06-15 16:46 NOVT Nmap scan report for google.com (127.0.0.1) Host is up (0.0012s latency). rDNS record for 127.0.0.1: google.com PORT STATE SERVICE 22/tcp open ssh 80/tcp closed http Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.18 seconds 

Are you trying to test communication or get a response from port 80 on that node? PING will try to establish communication to a specific host through ICMP which has nothing to do with ports.

Instead try to check port info and test communication:

nmap -v -p 80 onofri.org