uping

Microsecond-precision ICMP ping for macOS and Linux.

Uses clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC) for sub-millisecond RTT measurement and reports results in whole microseconds. Prefers SOCK_RAW for accurate timing, falling back to SOCK_DGRAM when privileges are unavailable. Output is colour-coded by RTT.

Usage

./uping 1.1.1.1
./uping -c 10 -i 0.5 google.com
./uping -W 1 -6 ipv6.google.com

UPING google.com (142.251.151.119): ICMPv4, timeout 2.0s
seq=1    12054µs  from 142.251.151.119
seq=2    12229µs  from 142.251.151.119
seq=3    11986µs  from 142.251.151.119
^C
--- google.com uping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0.0% loss
rtt min/avg/max = 11986/12089.7/12229 µs

Options

Flag	Description
-c COUNT	Stop after COUNT pings (default: run until Ctrl+C)
-i INTERVAL	Seconds between pings, may be fractional (default: 1)
-W TIMEOUT	Per-ping timeout in seconds (default: 2)
-4	Force IPv4
-6	Force IPv6
-n	Disable colour output

RTT colour coding: green < 1 ms, yellow < 10 ms, red >= 10 ms.

Build

make

Requires cc / gcc / clang and a standard C library. No other dependencies.

Install

sudo make install   # installs to /usr/local/bin/uping

On Linux, sudo make install also runs setcap cap_net_raw+ep on the binary so it can be used without sudo at runtime. Requires libcap2-bin (Debian/Ubuntu) or libcap (Fedora/RHEL):

sudo apt install libcap2-bin   # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install libcap        # Fedora/RHEL

If setcap is unavailable you can run sudo uping directly, or allow unprivileged ICMP system-wide:

sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.ping_group_range="0 2147483647"

On macOS, SOCK_RAW requires root for accurate timing. Without root, uping falls back to SOCK_DGRAM which adds ~30 ms of kernel overhead to every reading. To run without sudo, apply setuid-root after installing (the same mechanism as the system ping):

sudo chown root:wheel /usr/local/bin/uping
sudo chmod u+s /usr/local/bin/uping

Uninstall

sudo make uninstall

License

MIT