ICMP control from a website Options

[Wavau]

Hello all,

I have a question regarding ICMP control from a website. I run a web, game-server hosting company and I would like to somehow when a web visitor clicks a button or even loads a page it pings the users IP and give a response back from that command to the site. It's more so the client can see the MS response time from him to the server or a specified IP address. there are a few other companies out there are have that ability but I have been racking my brain for the last week trying to fugure out how to pull this off.

Any Ideas? I was looking at a .net suite but I am a terrible coder.


Thanks in advance guys and gals

Shane

[pandy]

I don't know what ICMP control is. Something with ActiveX? Anyway, will pinging the user be very useful? Doesn't everyone use a firewall these days?

Is the purpose to let users test the server speed from their computer? I've seen some good applets and other thingamajigs.
http://hotscripts.com/search/12960079.html
Not the answer to your question, but maybe an idea.

[Peter1968]

Ping shouldn't be blocked by a firewall if the ICMP request is outbound which is what the OP is trying to set up. The user would ping the OP, not vice versa.

http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/38063.html i one PHP-based script I found that may help.

You are going to need to do some coding, regardless of the solution you choose

[Wavau]

Ping shouldn't be blocked by a firewall if the ICMP request is outbound which is what the OP is trying to set up. The user would ping the OP, not vice versa.

http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/38063.html i one PHP-based script I found that may help.

You are going to need to do some coding, regardless of the solution you choose

Thank you I am going to give that a shot today and see where I get with it. Basically the purpose of this is to judge a persons latency from their system to a remote host. Not sure if any of you have played games online or anything like that but when one chooses a server to play on they look for that servers latency(basically ping) to the server, the lower the latency the better gaming experience they will have also they probably won't die as much. When customers rent servers from us they want to make sure they will have the lowest ping they can get as to ensure that they will not be lagging out while fragging. One of the most common questions we get in our live help is "can i have an IP to test ping" then we end up haveing to explain the ping command to them. Some companies have started putting a Ping utility on their site so all the customer has to do is type in the ip address to ping and the customer can get their ping right there without having to come in and ask questions.

Thanks and I will keep you informed if it works

Shane

[Peter1968]

Yeah, I've played games online, mind you I used Gamespy to find most of my HL and Quake 2 fun, but...explaining how to use the ping utility isn't hard and it's not hard to use.

Most folks who do game online are fairly clued when it comes to doing things that are slightly under the hood like that, so I'd explain how to use ping at the command line.

After all, a fair number of the gaming community mod, run key macros and do other tweak-type stuff, so explaining ping to the odd one who doesn't know won't hurt anyone.

Plus, a browser-based result is going to differ slightly from the in-game or raw ping result, usually due to the methods (UDP, HTTP, etc...)