RE: TNSPING VS. REGULAR PING..! WHY SUCH A DIFFERENCE

I came across just this last week with one of our monitoring tools. We set up an execution of a script that was using PING to check whether the status of a list of remote POS devices to make sure they were available. The collection worked fine - until we shutdown the POS device, and physically switched it off - and the PING still replied!

The POS devices have UPS built in to them.. The client also thought it may have been the way that DNS/DHCP was set up via the router. It stumped me for a time.. ;)

We use NETSVC now to check for the status of a service.

Mark

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-----Original Message-----
Jared Still
Sent: 23 December 2003 04:34
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Paul mentioned a few reasons for this.

Another is that a ping does not get past the NIC. The ping is answered by software running on the card. You may have noticed at times that a ping is not a reliable method for determining if a server is still functioning.

The OS can crash, but the NIC still responds to a ping.

Tnsping on the other hand must get a response from Oracle Net service or daemon running on the server, a much longer path as Paul pointed out.

HTH Jared

On Mon, 2003-12-22 at 17:29, Murali Vallath wrote:
> I have recently noticed in this one situation that there is a great
difference between a tnsping vs a regular ping to the same server.
>
> for example this tnsping took about 270 ms which is strange and its
consistent
>
> Used TNSNAMES adapter to resolve the alias
> Attempting to contact (DESCRIPTION = (ADD
> RESS_LIST = (load_balance = on) (failover = on) (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL =
TCP)(HOST
> = myhost1.com)(PORT = 1521)) (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST =
myhost2.com)(
> PORT = 1521))) (CONNECT_DATA = (SERVICE_NAME = xyzdb) (FAILOVER_MODE =
(TYPE
> = SELECT) (METHOD = BASIC) (RETRIES = 20) (DELAY = 15))))
> OK (270 msec)
>
> and a ping to the same host
>
> Ping statistics for x.x.x.x:
> Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
> Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
> Minimum = 61ms, Maximum = 70ms, Average = 67ms
>
> Why could there be such a difference?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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