ICMP Messages & Ping and Traceroute Testing

ICMP Messages

The TCP/IP suite provides for error messages and informational messages when communicating with another IP device. These messages are sent using ICMP. The purpose of these messages is to provide feedback about issues related to the processing of IP packets under certain conditions. The ICMP messages common to both ICMPv4 and ICMPv6 are: Host reachability, Destination or Service Unreachable, and Time exceeded. An ICMP Echo Message tests the reachability of a host on an IP network. The local host sends an ICMP Echo Request to a host. If the host is available, the destination host responds with an Echo Reply. This is the basis of the ping utility. When a host or gateway receives a packet that it cannot deliver, it can use an ICMP Destination Unreachable message to notify the source. The message will include a code that indicates why the packet could not be delivered. An ICMPv4 Time Exceeded message is used by a router to indicate that a packet cannot be forwarded because the Time to Live (TTL) field of the packet was decremented to zero. If a router receives a packet and decrements the TTL field to zero, it discards the packet and sends a Time Exceeded message to the source host. ICMPv6 also sends a Time Exceeded in this situation. ICMPv6 uses the IPv6 hop limit field to determine if the packet has expired. Time Exceeded messages are used by the traceroute tool. The messages between an IPv6 router and an IPv6 device including dynamic address allocation include RS and RA. The messages between IPv6 devices include the redirect (similar to IPv4), NS and NA.

Ping and Traceroute Testing

Ping (used by IPv4 and IPv6) uses ICMP echo request and echo reply messages to test connectivity between hosts. To test connectivity to another host on a network, an echo request is sent to the host address using the ping command. If the host at the specified address receives the echo request, it responds with an echo reply. As each echo reply is received, ping provides feedback on the time between when the request was sent and when the reply was received. After all the requests are sent, the ping utility provides a summary that includes the success rate and average round-trip time to the destination. Ping can be used to test the internal configuration of IPv4 or IPv6 on the local host. Ping the local loopback address of 127.0.0.1 for IPv4 (::1 for IPv6). Use ping to test the ability of a host to communicate on the local network, by pinging the IP address of the default gateway of the host. A successful ping to the default gateway indicates that the host and the router interface serving as the default gateway are both operational on the local network. Ping can also be used to test the ability of a local host to communicate across an internetwork. The local host can ping an operational IPv4 host of a remote network. Traceroute (tracert) generates a list of hops that were successfully reached along the path. This list provides verification and troubleshooting information. If the data reaches the destination, then the trace lists the interface of every router in the path between the hosts. If the data fails at some hop along the way, the address of the last router that responded to the trace can provide an indication of where the problem or security restrictions are found. The round-trip time is the time a packet takes to reach the remote host and for the response from the host to return. Traceroute makes use of a function of the TTL field in IPv4 and the Hop Limit field in IPv6 in the Layer 3 headers, along with the ICMP time exceeded message.