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Simple "ping" box

C

Calab

Junior Member
Just wondering if there is such a device available...

A simple little box with an ethernet port and a power plug. All it does is connect to a network, leases a DHCP IP address and then responds to pings - that's all.

I'm looking for something that we can hang at the end of our network that we can simply use to monitor availability. We don't need a PC or any other functionality other than the ping response.

Anyone know if something like this is available?
 
Why can't you just monitor the devices already on your network? Why the need for a dedicated box? The first thing that comes to mind if you wanted something like this would be a small print server but again, I don't see the need for adding anything.
 
A lot of routers support the ability to respond to pings. Or do you need to make sure you can get internal to the network, if so, see MustISO's response and just port forward and ICMP ping request to the relevant internal IP address.
 
Just about every device in existence responds to pings. This means you could (in theory) pick up anything from an old router to an HP jetdirect from 1992 and get something to ping. However having a dedicated device for this purpose doesn't generally provide much value as you could simply a) ping a device on the network b) ping the inside interface of the router / firewall / bridge that is already out there.

We commonly monitor against the inside interface of the ASA's on our VPN tunnels for example. If we can't ping the inside, the site is basically down.
 
If you really need some functionality beyond a ping, you could make a server with a raspberry pi that would do whatever linux will do. That list is prodigious, but you need to have some linux skills to make that work. And time.
 
I have a cheap laptop that I found laying around at work. I set it to stay on when the lid is closed, plugged it into the network, installed remote access software, shut the lid and tucked it away where it would be out of the way.

Then I setup the free version of PRTG to monitor some network components and the free version of ManageEngine Netflow Analyzer to monitor flows from our ASA. It's a pretty complete solution for network monitoring and is set to send out e-mails/texts/et. al. if a component on the network becomes unreachable or surpasses some other threshold I set.

A bit more than what you're looking for, but like I said, most people in IT can scrounge up an abandoned or under utilized laptop.

Jack's solution runs in the same vein and is also good, although wouldn't using that ethernet adapter preclude you from charging the tablet?
 
If you need something with a little more capability, you could look at VisualWare. They have devices that are made specifically to test the health of a network from a throughput/reliability/etc perspective. They aren't cheap, but they work pretty well when you need more info.

There's also Cisco's IP SLA depending on the equipment you're using.
 
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