poink

If you need a TCP/IP-based ping tool, you might want to consider poink. Unlike other implementations, this one does not require any special privileges and is designed for multiuser shell systems. It is also intended to be a more secure replacement for the standard IPv4 network monitoring tool.

One of the benefits of using poink is its security features. It is a nosuid version, which makes it quite secure. Furthermore, it uses a TCP linear SYN/RST challenge instead of ICMP echo/echo reply, which helps prevent flood-pings and other security compromises.

Currently, poink only implements basic ping parameters, which are compatible with the original ping tool. This includes delay between pings, number of packets to send, and packet timeout. However, note that longer timeouts can result in slightly inaccurate results due to TCP/IP retransmits.

Once you're finished using poink, you'll receive some statistics about the round-trip times, similar to what the original ping tool does. Round-trip times are displayed in milliseconds (1/1000 of a second, ms), but poink also displays time in microseconds (1/1000000 of a second, usec) if trip time is really low.

Currently, poink only runs on Linux, but a BSD port should be easy to develop if there is enough interest.