Send-Ping Cmdlet

Parameters Output Objects Config Settings

The Send-Ping component encapsulates ICMP ECHO functionality, used to check whether there is a communications link between two computers.

Syntax

Send-Ping [parameters]

Remarks

This cmdlet will send an ICMP echo request packet to the remote host indicated by Server. The results of the ping will be returned in a PingResponse object.

The cmdlet operates synchronously by default (waits for a response before returning control to the caller), however, the cmdlet may also operate asynchronously (return control immediately), by setting Timeout to 0.

The cmdlets support pipeline input for some of their parameters. Prebuilding an object and piping it to the cmdlet is very useful, but should be used with caution to prevent security conflicts. Steps have been taken to decrease the risk of a possibly accidental pipe to the cmdlet, for instance, the Credential parameter cannot be piped to the cmdlet and must be specified manually.

# send a ping send-ping -server microsoft.com # send 5 pings send-ping -server nsoftware.com -count 5

Parameter List

The following is the full list of the parameters of the cmdlet with short descriptions. Click on the links for further details.


LogFile	The location of a file to which debug information is written.
Config	Specifies one or more configuration settings.
Count	The number of packets to send to the remote host.
LocalIP	The IP address of the local interface to use.
LogFile	The location of a file to which debug information is written.
PacketSize	The size of the packet to be sent.
Server	The address of the Server.
Timeout	The maximum time allowed for the operation.
TimeToLive	The time to live (TTL) value for the ICMP packets sent by the component.
TypeOfService	The type of the ICMP message sent as a ping request.

Output Objects

The following is the full list of the output objects returned by the cmdlet with short descriptions. Click on the links for further details.


PingResponse	Object returned in response to a Ping request.

Config Settings

The following is a list of config settings for the cmdlet with short descriptions. Click on the links for further details.


DelayHostResolution	Whether the hostname is resolved when RemoteHost is set.
TimeoutInMilliseconds	The timeout is treated as milliseconds.
DelayHostResolution	Whether the hostname is resolved when RemoteHost is set.
DontFragment	Whether the DontFragment control flag is set.
IcmpDllTimeout	The timeout for the component when using the icmp.dll.
MaxMessageSize	The maximum length of the messages that can be received.
MulticastTTL	The time to live (TTL) value for multicast ICMP packets sent by the component.
ReceiveAllMode	Enables a socket to receive all IPv4 or IPv6 packets on the network.
TimeoutInMilliseconds	The timeout is treated as milliseconds.
UseConnection	Determines whether to use a connected socket.
UseICMPDLL	Use the icmp.dll included on Windows Systems.
UseIPHLPDLL	Use the iphlpapi.dll included on Windows Systems.
UseIPv6	Whether to use IPv6.
AbsoluteTimeout	Determines whether timeouts are inactivity timeouts or absolute timeouts.
FirewallData	Used to send extra data to the firewall.
InBufferSize	The size in bytes of the incoming queue of the socket.
OutBufferSize	The size in bytes of the outgoing queue of the socket.
BuildInfo	Information about the product's build.
CodePage	The system code page used for Unicode to Multibyte translations.
LicenseInfo	Information about the current license.
MaskSensitive	Whether sensitive data is masked in log messages.
UseInternalSecurityAPI	Tells the component whether or not to use the system security libraries or an internal implementation.

LogFile Parameter (Send-Ping Cmdlet)

The location of a file to which debug information is written.

Syntax

Send-Ping -LogFile string

Remarks

When specified, the cmdlet will log debug information to the file. If the file exists, the information will be appended.

Default Value

null

Config Property (Send-Ping Cmdlet)

Specifies one or more configuration settings.

Syntax

Send-Ping -Config string[]

Remarks

The Config parameter takes one or more name-value pairs that represent the name of the configuration setting and value, i.e.: -config "Name=Value"

Default Value

null

Count Property (Send-Ping Cmdlet)

The number of packets to send to the remote host.

Syntax

Send-Ping -Count int

Remarks

If this parameter is set to -1 the cmdlet will continue to send ping packets until interrupted.

Default Value

LocalIP Property (Send-Ping Cmdlet)

The IP address of the local interface to use.

Syntax

Send-Ping -LocalIP string

Remarks

This parameter is useful when the cmdlet is running on a machine that has more than one network interface (each with its own IP address and network access privileges).

Default Value

Parameter Alias

LocalAddress

LogFile Property (Send-Ping Cmdlet)

The location of a file to which debug information is written.

Syntax

Send-Ping -LogFile string

Remarks

When specified, the cmdlet will log debug information to the file. If the file exists, the information will be appended.

Default Value

PacketSize Property (Send-Ping Cmdlet)

The size of the packet to be sent.

Syntax

Send-Ping -PacketSize int

Remarks

PacketSize allows you to control the size of the data packet sent. The default packet size is 64 bytes, with a minimum of 8 bytes (4 bytes of the ICMP header + ECHO identifier).

Default Value

Server Property (Send-Ping Cmdlet)

The address of the Server.

Syntax

Send-Ping -Server string

Remarks

The cmdlet requires a server address to be provided. Either an IP address or the server host name can be provided.

Default Value

Parameter Position

This is a required parameter.

Timeout Property (Send-Ping Cmdlet)

The maximum time allowed for the operation.

Syntax

Send-Ping -Timeout int

Remarks

After the specified interval in seconds, the cmdlet will throw a Timeout error if the operation is not completed.

Default Value

TimeToLive Property (Send-Ping Cmdlet)

The time to live (TTL) value for the ICMP packets sent by the component.

Syntax

Send-Ping -TimeToLive int

Remarks

The Time-to-Live (TTL) field of the ICMP packet is a counter limiting the lifetime of a packet.

Each router (or other module) that handles a packet decrements the TTL field by at least one or more if it holds the packet for more than one second, thus the TTL is effectively a hop count limit on how far a datagram can propagate through the Internet. When the TTL is reduced to zero (or less), the packet is discarded.

If TimeToLive is set to 0, then the default TTL value of the underlying TCP/IP subsystem will be used.

Default Value

Parameter Alias

TTL

TypeOfService Property (Send-Ping Cmdlet)

The type of the ICMP message sent as a ping request.

Syntax

Send-Ping -TypeOfService int

Remarks

The default value is 8 (ECHO REQUEST).

Default Value

PingResponse Output Object (Send-Ping Cmdlet)

Object returned in response to a Ping request.

Syntax

Object PingResponse {
   string Source;
   string Status;
   int Time;
}

Remarks

The result of a ping is indicated by the following parameters:


Source	The address of the host responding to the PING (ICMP ECHO) request. This may or may not be the host used in Server.
Status	Status is set to "OK" for normal operation, or it contains an error string such as "Network unreachable", "Host unreachable", etc.
Time	Time elapsed between sending the original packet and the remote host reply. The time value is expressed in milliseconds. The lowest resolution available depends on the resolution of the clock on the host system (normally between 10ms and 20ms).

Config Settings (Send-Ping Cmdlet)

The cmdlet accepts one or more of the following configuration settings. Configuration settings are similar in functionality to properties, but they are rarely used. In order to avoid "polluting" the property namespace of the cmdlet, access to these internal properties is provided through the Config method.

Ping Config Settings

DelayHostResolution: Whether the hostname is resolved when RemoteHost is set.

This setting specifies whether a hostname is resolved immediately when RemoteHost is set. If true the cmdlet will resolve the hostname and the IP address will be present in the RemoteHost property. If false, the hostname is not resolved until needed by the component when a method to connect or send data is called. If desired, ResolveRemoteHost may called to manually resolve the value in RemoteHost at any time.

The default value is false for the default library and true for the Async library. The default value is false.

TimeoutInMilliseconds: The timeout is treated as milliseconds.

Setting TimeoutInMilliseconds to True causes the cmdlet to use the value in the Timeout property as milliseconds instead of seconds, which is the default.

ICMP Config Settings

DelayHostResolution: Whether the hostname is resolved when RemoteHost is set.

The default value is false for the default library and true for the Async library. The default value is false.

DontFragment: Whether the DontFragment control flag is set.

When set to True, the DontFragment control flag in the IP header will be set.

The default value is False.

IcmpDllTimeout: The timeout for the cmdlet when using the icmp.dll.

The cmdlet will wait for the operation to complete before returning control. If IcmpDllTimeout expires, and the operation is not yet complete, the cmdlet throws an exception. IcmpDllTimeout must be set to a positive value.

The default value for IcmpDllTimeout is 60 seconds.

Note: This configuration setting is valid only when UseICMPDLL is set to True.

MaxMessageSize: The maximum length of the messages that can be received.

This setting specifies the maximum size of the datagrams that the cmdlet will accept without truncation.

MulticastTTL: The time to live (TTL) value for multicast ICMP packets sent by the component.

When sending multicast packets, the setting specifies the time-to-live (TTL) field. The TTL field of the ICMP packet is a counter limiting the lifetime of a packet.

Each router (or other module) that handles a packet decrements the TTL field by one or more if it holds the packet for more than one second. Thus, the TTL is effectively a hop count limit on how far a datagram can propagate through the internet. When the TTL is reduced to zero (or less), the packet is discarded.

By default, the default TTL value of the underlying Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/IP subsystem will be used.

ReceiveAllMode: Enables a socket to receive all IPv4 or IPv6 packets on the network.

This setting specifies the ReceiveAll mode for the socket. The following modes are available:


Value	Description
-1 (default)	The socket option is left unspecified.
0	Do not receive all network traffic.
1	Receive all network traffic. This enables the promiscuous mode on the network interface card (NIC). On a LAN segment with a network hub, a NIC that supports the promiscuous mode will capture all IPv4 or IPv6 traffic on the LAN, including traffic between other computers on the same LAN segment.
2	Receive only socket-level network traffic (this feature may not be implemented by your Windows installation).
3	Receive only IP-level network traffic. This option does not enable the promiscuous mode on the NIC. This option affects packet processing only at the IP level. The NIC still receives only those packets directed to its configured unicast and multicast addresses. A socket with this option enabled, however, not only will receive packets directed to specific IP addresses, but also will receive all the IPv4 or IPv6 packets the NIC receives.

TimeoutInMilliseconds: The timeout is treated as milliseconds.

Setting TimeoutInMilliseconds to True causes the cmdlet to use the value in the IcmpDllTimeout configuration setting as milliseconds instead of seconds, which is the default.

Note: This setting is valid only when UseICMPDLL is set to True.

UseConnection: Determines whether to use a connected socket.

UseConnection specifies whether the cmdlet should use a connected socket or not. The connection is defined as an association in between the local address/port and the remote address/port. As such, this is not a connection in the traditional TCP sense. What it means is only that the cmdlet will send and receive data only to and from the specified destination.

The default value for this setting is False.

UseICMPDLL: Use the icmp.dll included on Windows Systems.

Setting UseICMPDLL to True causes the cmdlet to use the icmp.dll on Windows 9x or on later machines. This sometimes enables access to raw sockets when permissions for standard operations are prohibited.

UseIPHLPDLL: Use the iphlpapi.dll included on Windows Systems.

Setting UseIPHLPDLL to True causes the cmdlet to use the iphlpapi.dll on Windows XP or on later machines. This sometimes enables access to raw sockets when permissions for standard operations are prohibited.

Note: If both this and UseICMPDLL are enabled, the iphlpapi.dll will take precedence.

UseIPv6: Whether to use IPv6.

When set to 0 (default), the cmdlet will use IPv4 exclusively. When set to 1, the cmdlet will use IPv6 exclusively. To instruct the cmdlet to prefer IPv6 addresses, but use IPv4 if IPv6 is not supported on the system, this setting should be set to 2. The default value is 0. Possible values are:


0	IPv4 Only
1	IPv6 Only
2	IPv6 with IPv4 fallback

Socket Config Settings

AbsoluteTimeout: Determines whether timeouts are inactivity timeouts or absolute timeouts.

If AbsoluteTimeout is set to True, any method which does not complete within Timeout seconds will be aborted. By default, AbsoluteTimeout is False, and the timeout is an inactivity timeout.

Note: This option is not valid for UDP ports.

FirewallData: Used to send extra data to the firewall.

When the firewall is a tunneling proxy, use this property to send custom (additional) headers to the firewall (e.g. headers for custom authentication schemes).

InBufferSize: The size in bytes of the incoming queue of the socket.

This is the size of an internal queue in the TCP/IP stack. You can increase or decrease its size depending on the amount of data that you will be receiving. Increasing the value of the InBufferSize setting can provide significant improvements in performance in some cases.

Some TCP/IP implementations do not support variable buffer sizes. If that is the case, when the cmdlet is activated the InBufferSize reverts to its defined size. The same happens if you attempt to make it too large or too small.

OutBufferSize: The size in bytes of the outgoing queue of the socket.

This is the size of an internal queue in the TCP/IP stack. You can increase or decrease its size depending on the amount of data that you will be sending. Increasing the value of the OutBufferSize setting can provide significant improvements in performance in some cases.

Some TCP/IP implementations do not support variable buffer sizes. If that is the case, when the cmdlet is activated the OutBufferSize reverts to its defined size. The same happens if you attempt to make it too large or too small.

Base Config Settings

BuildInfo: Information about the product's build.

When queried, this setting will return a string containing information about the product's build.

CodePage: The system code page used for Unicode to Multibyte translations.

The default code page is Unicode UTF-8 (65001).

The following is a list of valid code page identifiers:


Identifier	Name
037	IBM EBCDIC - U.S./Canada
437	OEM - United States
500	IBM EBCDIC - International
708	Arabic - ASMO 708
709	Arabic - ASMO 449+, BCON V4
710	Arabic - Transparent Arabic
720	Arabic - Transparent ASMO
737	OEM - Greek (formerly 437G)
775	OEM - Baltic
850	OEM - Multilingual Latin I
852	OEM - Latin II
855	OEM - Cyrillic (primarily Russian)
857	OEM - Turkish
858	OEM - Multilingual Latin I + Euro symbol
860	OEM - Portuguese
861	OEM - Icelandic
862	OEM - Hebrew
863	OEM - Canadian-French
864	OEM - Arabic
865	OEM - Nordic
866	OEM - Russian
869	OEM - Modern Greek
870	IBM EBCDIC - Multilingual/ROECE (Latin-2)
874	ANSI/OEM - Thai (same as 28605, ISO 8859-15)
875	IBM EBCDIC - Modern Greek
932	ANSI/OEM - Japanese, Shift-JIS
936	ANSI/OEM - Simplified Chinese (PRC, Singapore)
949	ANSI/OEM - Korean (Unified Hangul Code)
950	ANSI/OEM - Traditional Chinese (Taiwan; Hong Kong SAR, PRC)
1026	IBM EBCDIC - Turkish (Latin-5)
1047	IBM EBCDIC - Latin 1/Open System
1140	IBM EBCDIC - U.S./Canada (037 + Euro symbol)
1141	IBM EBCDIC - Germany (20273 + Euro symbol)
1142	IBM EBCDIC - Denmark/Norway (20277 + Euro symbol)
1143	IBM EBCDIC - Finland/Sweden (20278 + Euro symbol)
1144	IBM EBCDIC - Italy (20280 + Euro symbol)
1145	IBM EBCDIC - Latin America/Spain (20284 + Euro symbol)
1146	IBM EBCDIC - United Kingdom (20285 + Euro symbol)
1147	IBM EBCDIC - France (20297 + Euro symbol)
1148	IBM EBCDIC - International (500 + Euro symbol)
1149	IBM EBCDIC - Icelandic (20871 + Euro symbol)
1200	Unicode UCS-2 Little-Endian (BMP of ISO 10646)
1201	Unicode UCS-2 Big-Endian
1250	ANSI - Central European
1251	ANSI - Cyrillic
1252	ANSI - Latin I
1253	ANSI - Greek
1254	ANSI - Turkish
1255	ANSI - Hebrew
1256	ANSI - Arabic
1257	ANSI - Baltic
1258	ANSI/OEM - Vietnamese
1361	Korean (Johab)
10000	MAC - Roman
10001	MAC - Japanese
10002	MAC - Traditional Chinese (Big5)
10003	MAC - Korean
10004	MAC - Arabic
10005	MAC - Hebrew
10006	MAC - Greek I
10007	MAC - Cyrillic
10008	MAC - Simplified Chinese (GB 2312)
10010	MAC - Romania
10017	MAC - Ukraine
10021	MAC - Thai
10029	MAC - Latin II
10079	MAC - Icelandic
10081	MAC - Turkish
10082	MAC - Croatia
12000	Unicode UCS-4 Little-Endian
12001	Unicode UCS-4 Big-Endian
20000	CNS - Taiwan
20001	TCA - Taiwan
20002	Eten - Taiwan
20003	IBM5550 - Taiwan
20004	TeleText - Taiwan
20005	Wang - Taiwan
20105	IA5 IRV International Alphabet No. 5 (7-bit)
20106	IA5 German (7-bit)
20107	IA5 Swedish (7-bit)
20108	IA5 Norwegian (7-bit)
20127	US-ASCII (7-bit)
20261	T.61
20269	ISO 6937 Non-Spacing Accent
20273	IBM EBCDIC - Germany
20277	IBM EBCDIC - Denmark/Norway
20278	IBM EBCDIC - Finland/Sweden
20280	IBM EBCDIC - Italy
20284	IBM EBCDIC - Latin America/Spain
20285	IBM EBCDIC - United Kingdom
20290	IBM EBCDIC - Japanese Katakana Extended
20297	IBM EBCDIC - France
20420	IBM EBCDIC - Arabic
20423	IBM EBCDIC - Greek
20424	IBM EBCDIC - Hebrew
20833	IBM EBCDIC - Korean Extended
20838	IBM EBCDIC - Thai
20866	Russian - KOI8-R
20871	IBM EBCDIC - Icelandic
20880	IBM EBCDIC - Cyrillic (Russian)
20905	IBM EBCDIC - Turkish
20924	IBM EBCDIC - Latin-1/Open System (1047 + Euro symbol)
20932	JIS X 0208-1990 & 0121-1990
20936	Simplified Chinese (GB2312)
21025	IBM EBCDIC - Cyrillic (Serbian, Bulgarian)
21027	Extended Alpha Lowercase
21866	Ukrainian (KOI8-U)
28591	ISO 8859-1 Latin I
28592	ISO 8859-2 Central Europe
28593	ISO 8859-3 Latin 3
28594	ISO 8859-4 Baltic
28595	ISO 8859-5 Cyrillic
28596	ISO 8859-6 Arabic
28597	ISO 8859-7 Greek
28598	ISO 8859-8 Hebrew
28599	ISO 8859-9 Latin 5
28605	ISO 8859-15 Latin 9
29001	Europa 3
38598	ISO 8859-8 Hebrew
50220	ISO 2022 Japanese with no halfwidth Katakana
50221	ISO 2022 Japanese with halfwidth Katakana
50222	ISO 2022 Japanese JIS X 0201-1989
50225	ISO 2022 Korean
50227	ISO 2022 Simplified Chinese
50229	ISO 2022 Traditional Chinese
50930	Japanese (Katakana) Extended
50931	US/Canada and Japanese
50933	Korean Extended and Korean
50935	Simplified Chinese Extended and Simplified Chinese
50936	Simplified Chinese
50937	US/Canada and Traditional Chinese
50939	Japanese (Latin) Extended and Japanese
51932	EUC - Japanese
51936	EUC - Simplified Chinese
51949	EUC - Korean
51950	EUC - Traditional Chinese
52936	HZ-GB2312 Simplified Chinese
54936	Windows XP: GB18030 Simplified Chinese (4 Byte)
57002	ISCII Devanagari
57003	ISCII Bengali
57004	ISCII Tamil
57005	ISCII Telugu
57006	ISCII Assamese
57007	ISCII Oriya
57008	ISCII Kannada
57009	ISCII Malayalam
57010	ISCII Gujarati
57011	ISCII Punjabi
65000	Unicode UTF-7
65001	Unicode UTF-8

The following is a list of valid code page identifiers for Mac OS only:


Identifier	Name
1	ASCII
2	NEXTSTEP
3	JapaneseEUC
4	UTF8
5	ISOLatin1
6	Symbol
7	NonLossyASCII
8	ShiftJIS
9	ISOLatin2
10	Unicode
11	WindowsCP1251
12	WindowsCP1252
13	WindowsCP1253
14	WindowsCP1254
15	WindowsCP1250
21	ISO2022JP
30	MacOSRoman
10	UTF16String
0x90000100	UTF16BigEndian
0x94000100	UTF16LittleEndian
0x8c000100	UTF32String
0x98000100	UTF32BigEndian
0x9c000100	UTF32LittleEndian
65536	Proprietary

LicenseInfo: Information about the current license.

When queried, this setting will return a string containing information about the license this instance of a cmdlet is using. It will return the following information:

Product: The product the license is for.
Product Key: The key the license was generated from.
License Source: Where the license was found (e.g., RuntimeLicense, License File).
License Type: The type of license installed (e.g., Royalty Free, Single Server).
Last Valid Build: The last valid build number for which the license will work.

MaskSensitive: Whether sensitive data is masked in log messages.

In certain circumstances it may be beneficial to mask sensitive data, like passwords, in log messages. Set this to true to mask sensitive data. The default is true.

This setting only works on these cmdlets: AS3Receiver, AS3Sender, Atom, Client(3DS), FTP, FTPServer, IMAP, OFTPClient, SSHClient, SCP, Server(3DS), Sexec, SFTP, SFTPServer, SSHServer, TCPClient, TCPServer.

UseInternalSecurityAPI: Tells the cmdlet whether or not to use the system security libraries or an internal implementation.

When set to false, the cmdlet will use the system security libraries by default to perform cryptographic functions where applicable. In this case, calls to unmanaged code will be made. In certain environments this is not desirable. To use a completely managed security implementation set this setting to true.

Setting this setting to true tells the cmdlet to use the internal implementation instead of using the system security libraries.

On Windows, this setting is set to false by default. On Linux/macOS, this setting is set to true by default.

If using the .NET Standard Library, this setting will be true on all platforms. The .NET Standard library does not support using the system security libraries.

Note: This setting is static. The value set is applicable to all cmdlets used in the application.

When this value is set the product's system DLL is no longer required as a reference, as all unmanaged code is stored in that file.