Using PingSweep Feature in Pinkie More Effectively!

May 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

PingSweep has been added to Pinkie since v1.08. And over the years, it’s been fine tuned and enhanced quite a bit.

Below are some tips to help take advantage of all the useful enhancements in Pinkie’s PingSweep feature:

  • Sweep a Subnet: To sweep a subnet, enter an IP Address, then select a subnet mask. Pinkie will automatically scan the subnet and also does DNS lookup for the addresses being scanned.
  • Sweep a Specific # of IPs: To sweep X number of address, enter the start Host Address then enter No. of Hosts and click on Start Ping Sweep button. Pinkie will scan from the Host Address up to X number of hosts and also does DNS lookup for them.
  • Copy PingSweep Result: At times, you might need to send the pingsweep result to someone else. To do that, just do an pingsweep then click on the Copy to Clipboard button. After that, you can paste it into your email or whatever application at your choosing.
  • Include Only Live Hosts: Check this option only if you want to copy the live hosts or those that responded to ICMP request.
  • Copy a Single Address: Click on a particular row in the result listview will copy its IP Address to the clipboard. I find this function is particularly useful when someone asks me for an IP Address that hasn’t been assigned.

There are some other enhancements in the works for PingSweep. Hopefully they will make it to the next release.

As always, if you need to enhance the PingSweep function to suite your need better, send in your request and I’ll check it out.

Filed Under: PingSweep, Tips & Tricks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Using Ping Feature More Effectively!

May 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Ping is one of the features of Pinkie that I use extensively as a network admin.  In this blog, I’ll show you how to take advantage of all the extra enhancements that come with Pinkie which you don’t have in the Command Window.

  • Ping Multiple Hosts: Press F1 to bring up the Add Host Address dialog. Enter hosts/IP addresses which can be separated by space, comma, semi-colon, tab or a line feed.
  • Reduce/Increase # of Rows Displayed For Ping Results: By default, Pinkie will show you 4 lines of ping results. This can fill up the window pretty quick if you ping multiple hosts at the same time. To reduce the # of rows, press F3 or increase it by F4.
  • Check Ping Statistics For a Host: Select a host by clicking on it, the status bar at the bottom will change to show the ping statistics for the selected host which includes packets sent/received, lost count & percentage, last ping RTT along with Min, Max & Avg RTTs.
  • Start/Stop a Ping: Right click on the host you want to start/stop pinging, select Ping first menu item in the context menu will change to Start/Stop as appropriate. Clicking on it will stop a ping in progress or start it if it’s not started yet.
  • Reset Ping Statistics: Right click on a host you want to reset statistics, select Ping then click on Reset Statistics.
  • Copy Ping Results: When troubleshooting network or server issues, you might have the need to send the ping result to someone. This can be done by simply right click on the host and select Copy Result to Clipboard. then paste it to an email or wherever you wish.
  • Logging Ping Results to Disk: If you wish to log ping results to a file to analyze later or send it to someone else, right click on the host, select Ping then in the context menu, click on Start Logging or Stop Logging as appropriate. By default, the ping results will be saved in C:\Users\[username]\Documents\ipUptime.net\Pinkie_Logs\. You can change this path in the Settings menu.

That’s not all of the enhancements that come with the Ping feature in Pinkie but it will definitely make you like and use Pinkie more.

If you can come up with a better way to use Ping or wish to have enhancements added to it, please let me know.

Filed Under: Ping, Tips & Tricks Tagged With: , , , , ,