Sunday, November 18, 2012

Broadcast/Network Ping

If there is a need to ping several devices in one same subnet and broadcast domain, you can do several commands or ping like the one below.

R1#ping 10.1.1.255

Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 10.1.1.255, timeout is 2 seconds:

Reply to request 0 from 10.1.1.2, 80 ms
Reply to request 0 from 10.1.1.3, 80 ms
Reply to request 0 from 10.1.1.4, 80 ms
Reply to request 1 from 10.1.1.4, 52 ms
Reply to request 1 from 10.1.1.2, 52 ms
Reply to request 1 from 10.1.1.3, 52 ms
Reply to request 2 from 10.1.1.3, 84 ms
Reply to request 2 from 10.1.1.4, 84 ms
Reply to request 2 from 10.1.1.2, 84 ms
Reply to request 3 from 10.1.1.2, 20 ms
Reply to request 3 from 10.1.1.4, 20 ms
Reply to request 3 from 10.1.1.3, 20 ms
Reply to request 4 from 10.1.1.3, 16 ms
Reply to request 4 from 10.1.1.4, 16 ms
Reply to request 4 from 10.1.1.2, 16 ms

You can also use the Network Address.

R1#ping 10.1.1.0

Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 10.1.1.0, timeout is 2 seconds:

Reply to request 0 from 10.1.1.4, 84 ms
Reply to request 0 from 10.1.1.2, 112 ms
Reply to request 0 from 10.1.1.3, 84 ms
Reply to request 1 from 10.1.1.2, 72 ms
Reply to request 1 from 10.1.1.3, 72 ms
Reply to request 1 from 10.1.1.4, 72 ms
Reply to request 2 from 10.1.1.4, 68 ms
Reply to request 2 from 10.1.1.2, 68 ms
Reply to request 2 from 10.1.1.3, 68 ms
Reply to request 3 from 10.1.1.3, 64 ms
Reply to request 3 from 10.1.1.4, 64 ms
Reply to request 3 from 10.1.1.2, 64 ms
Reply to request 4 from 10.1.1.4, 72 ms
Reply to request 4 from 10.1.1.3, 72 ms
Reply to request 4 from 10.1.1.2, 72 ms


You can also do a single ping command to check if all links in the routers are up or not. You can the following below. This works on all kinds of WAN interfaces connected to the router.

R1#ping 255.255.255.255 rep 1

Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 1, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 255.255.255.255, timeout is 2 seconds:

Reply to request 0 from 15.15.15.5, 16 ms
Reply to request 0 from 10.1.1.4, 16 ms
Reply to request 0 from 10.1.1.3, 16 ms
Reply to request 0 from 10.1.1.2, 16 ms


This command can be helpful during the CCIE lab exam to verify if interfaces are working. I assume that all who read this already knew this from their CCNA studies but I guess there are exceptions. Even the smartest Cisco Engineers forget basic commands sometimes. Let me know if you are one of those who didn't know this one.
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