ICMP ping

The following options exist to monitor systems using ICMP pings:

• ICMP response statistic collection

• Metrics provided by ping subagent

ICMP response statistic collection

NetXMS can periodically perform ICMP polls and calculate node availability statistics. This functionality can be controlled globally via the server configuration parameter ICMP.CollectPollStatistics or locally on each node. The ICMP polling interval and statistic calculation period (expressed in number of polls), timeout and ICMP packet size are configured via server configuration parameters. See for more details Server configuration parameters.

ICMP requests are sent to the primary IP address of the node. Additional targets can be specified in the node properties. It is also possible to set interfaces of the node as targets by enabling Collect ICMP response statistic for this interface in the properties of the interface. Please note that enabling this for the interface that corresponds to the primary IP address will lead to pinging this address twice.

ICMP polling is performed either from the server, from a zone proxy if zoning is used, or from a specific proxy when this is configured in the node properties. The proxying agent should have the ping.nsm subagent enabled.

The results of the ICMP response statistic collection for primary IP address are visible in Object Details -> Overview and are available as internal metrics:

• ICMP.Jitter

• ICMP.PacketLoss

• ICMP.ResponseTime.Average

• ICMP.ResponseTime.Last

• ICMP.ResponseTime.Max

• ICMP.ResponseTime.Min

The results of the ICMP response statistic collection for additional targets and interfaces are available as internal metrics:

• ICMP.Jitter(*)

• ICMP.PacketLoss(*)

• ICMP.ResponseTime.Average(*)

• ICMP.ResponseTime.Last(*)

• ICMP.ResponseTime.Max(*)

• ICMP.ResponseTime.Min(*)

For example, the ICMP.PacketLoss(8.8.8.8) internal metric will provide packet loss for the target with IP address 8.8.8.8.

No historical data is stored by default. It is necessary to configure DCIs using the above mentioned internal metric to store historical data.

Ping subagent

This subagent can be used to measure ICMP ping response times from one location to another. When loaded, the PING subagent adds a number of metrics to the agent. Measurements can be either requested by the server or scheduled by the agent itself.

Metrics requested by the server

Metric

Description

Icmp.Ping(target, timeout, psize, dontfragmentflag, retrycount)

ICMP ping response time from target. Agent will send echo request as soon as it receives request for the value of the metric, and will return the response time for that particular request. Arguments: target should be an IP address or hostname. timeout specifies timeout in milliseconds. This is an optional argument. If omitted, the value from the Timeout configuration parameter will be used. psize specifies the packet size in bytes including the IP header. This is an optional argument. If omitted, the value from the DefaultPacketSize configuration parameter will be used. dontfragmentflag defines if the don’t fragment flag is set in ICMP requests. This is an optional argument. If omitted, the value from the DefaultDoNotFragmentFlag configuration parameter will be used. retrycount defines the number of retries. This is an optional argument. If omitted, a default value of 1 is used. Please note that while metrics scheduled by the agent just return the result of the background ping process, this metric waits for actual ping completion and then returns the result. Because of this behavior, it is not recommended to use the Icmp.Ping metric for regular monitoring but instead only for occasional tests. For instant monitoring, you should configure targets for background ping and use the Icmp.AvgPingTime or Icmp.LastPingTime metrics to retrieve results.

Metrics scheduled by the agent

There is a number of metrics that are collected based on the background ping process scheduled by the agent (based on the “PacketRate” parameter).

Targets for these metrics can be either defined in the agent configuration file (using one or more “Target” parameters), or registered automatically on first request from server. If targets are registered automatically, the default packet size is used. The first request to a non-existing target will return “0” as a value. Automatically registered targets are automatically removed after a timeout, when the server stops requesting metrics for that target.

Single-value metrics

Metric	Description
Icmp.AvgPingTime(target)	Average ICMP ping response time from target for the last minute. The argument target can be either an IP address or a name specified in the Target configuration record (see below).
ICMP.MovingAvgPingTime(target)	Moving average of response time from target. Time period for moving average calculation is set by the MovingAverageTimePeriod agent configuration parameter (see below).
Icmp.LastPingTime(target)	Last ICMP ping response time from target.
ICMP.MaxPingTime(target)	Maximum ICMP ping response time from target for the last minute.
ICMP.MinPingTime(target)	Minimum ICMP ping response time from target for the last minute.
ICMP.CumulativeMaxPingTime(target)	Maximum encountered ICMP ping response time from target since that target was added.
ICMP.CumulativeMinPingTime(target)	Minimum encountered ICMP ping response time from target since that target was added.
Icmp.PacketLoss(target)	ICMP ping packet loss (in percents) for target for the last minute.
Icmp.PingStdDev(target)	Standard deviation of the response time for the target for last minute.
ICMP.Jitter(target)	Jitter of ICMP ping response time from target for last minute.
ICMP.MovingAvgJitter(target)	Moving average of response time jitter from target. Time period for moving average calculation is set by MovingAverageTimePeriod agent configuration parameter (see below).

Tables

Table

Description

Icmp.Targets

Table of configured ping targets. Columns: IP address Last response time (milliseconds) Average response time (milliseconds) Minimal response time (milliseconds) Maximum response time (milliseconds) Moving average response time (milliseconds) Standard deviation of response time (milliseconds) Jitter of response time (milliseconds) Moving average jitter of response time (milliseconds) Cumulative minimal response time (milliseconds) Cumulative maximum response time (milliseconds) Packet loss (percents) Configured packet size Name DNS name Automatic

Lists

List	Description
Icmp.Targets	List of configured ping target names

Configuration file

All configuration parameters related to the PING subagent should be placed into [PING] section of the configuration file of the agent. The following configuration parameters are supported:

Parameter	Format	Description	Default value
AutoConfigureTargets	boolean	Allow automatic registration of ICMP targets when the metrics for a new target are requested from the server.	yes
DefaultDoNotFragmentFlag	boolean	Default value for the Don’t Fragment flag in ICMP requests.	no
DefaultPacketSize	bytes	Set default packet size to bytes.	46
MaxTargetInactivityTime	seconds	Timeout to remove an automatically registered ICMP target if the server stops requesting metrics for that target.	86400
MovingAverageTimePeriod	seconds	Set time period used for the moving average value calculation.	3600
PacketRate	packets	Set ping packet rate per minute. Allowed values are between 1 and 60 and values below or above will be adjusted automatically.	4
Target	ip:name:psize	Add target with IP address ip to the background ping target list and assign an optional name name to it. The target will be pinged using packets of psize bytes. The name and packet size fields are optional and can be omitted. This parameter can be given multiple times to add multiple targets.	none
ThreadPoolMaxSize	threads	Maximal number of threads in the thread pool of the agent that is serving scheduled ICMP measurements.	1024
ThreadPoolMinSize	threads	Minimal number of threads in the thread pool of the agent that is serving scheduled ICMP measurements.	1
Timeout	milliseconds	Set response timeout to milliseconds. Allowed values are between 500 and 5000 and values below or above will be adjusted automatically.	3000

Configuration example:

# This sample nxagentd.conf instructs agent to:
#   1. load the PING subagent
#   2. Ping target 10.0.0.1 with default size (46 bytes) packets and 10.0.0.2 with 1000 bytes packets
#   3. Timeout for ping set to 1 second and pings are sent 12 times per minute (each 5 seconds)

MasterServers = netxms.demo
SubAgent = ping.nsm

[PING]
Timeout = 1000
PacketRate = 12 # every 5 seconds
Target = 10.0.0.1:target_1
Target = 10.0.0.2:target_2:1000

Note

Response time of 10000 indicates timeout