19

Sorry, this may be a dumb question, but I noticed something weird when I went to terminal and typed

ping -o mysite.com

and I get the message...

Request timeout for icmp_seq 0

but when I visit my site, it's fine. Is this something to be concerned about (i.e. what does this mean for my end users? Is my site too slow?) or since I can access it via a browser, should I disregard this message?

Also, is this something that should be brought up with my hosting company? I don't control the server myself...

Update

I just contacted my hosting provider (BlueHost), and learned that they disabled all ICMP packets, including ping, for security reasons.

jerry
  • 525

3 Answers3

17

No ping response from your website could mean several things (other than the server having issues) :

Reason 1. You could be behind an HTTP Proxy. In that case the ICMP messages, don't make it out into the internet, so you wouldn't receive an echo reply.

Reason 2. The server has been configured not to respond to ping.

Check using http://ping.eu/ping/. If it does ping, it is just the network you are currently behind that is preventing you seeing ping responses. If it doesn't it is probably Reason 2.

Anirudh Ramanathan
  • 753
4

Most web hosting providers will block ICMP pings by default. This is for security purposes to prevent potential DoS attacks.

There are many services out there that you can use to automate the monitoring of your website's uptime.

Some examples:

  • http://www.pingdom.com
  • http://www.siteuptime.com
  • http://www.site24x7.com
    • 1

    Wow, the last answer was 10 years ago. This post was the first one I found while looking to resolve the same issue.

    If you're currently running an Amazon AWS EC2 instance, I managed to resolve this from the following link: https://www.edureka.co/community/918/is-it-possible-to-ping-aws-ec2-instance?show=93307#a93307. The instructions on that page that helped me were as follows:

    1.Go to EC2 Dashboard and click "Running Instances" on "Security Groups", select the group of your instance which you need to add security.

    2.click on the "Inbound" tab
    

    3.Click "Edit" Button (It will open an popup window)
    

    4.click "Add Rule"
    

    5.Select the "Custom ICMP rule - IPv4" as Type
    

    6.Select "Echo Request" and "Echo Response" as the Protocol (Port Range by default show as "N/A)
    

    7.Enter the "0.0.0.0/0" as Source
    

    8.Click "Save"

    I applied the same rules for IPv6 as well.

    For Step 5, you can also select All ICMP - IPv4. For IPv6, you would select All ICMP - IPv6. For the 'source' column (usually showing 'custom' by default', you can select 'Anywhere-IPv4' for IPv4 config and 'Anywhere-IPv6' for IPv6 config.

    The following screenshot shows the 'edit inbound rules' page: 'Edit Inbound Rules' page for Amazon AWS EC2 instance

    The following screenshot shows the Inbound Rules after I click the orange 'Save Rules' button: enter image description here

    Rob
    • 111
    • 3