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             Perform and evaluate ICMP Echo with another IP host
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Brief
#####

The 'ping' component continuously sends ICMP Echo requests to a given IP host
and waits for the corresponding ICMP Echo replies. For each successfull ICMP
Echo handshake it prints a short statistic. By now, it can be used only with a
static IP configuration. The size of the ICMP data field can be configured. It
gets filled with the letters of the alphabet ('a' to 'z') repeatedly.


Configuration
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This is an example configuration of the component which shows the default
value for each attribute except 'config.dst_ip' and 'config.src_ip':

! <config src_ip="10.0.0.72"
!         dst_ip="10.0.0.24"
!         data_size="56"
!         period_sec="5"
!         verbose="no"
!         count="5" />


This is a short description of the tags and attributes:

:config.src_ip:
  Mandatory. IP address of the component.

:config.dst_ip:
  Mandatory. IP address of the target host.

:config.data_size:
  Optional. Size of the ICMP data field.

:config.period_sec:
  Optional. Length of send interval in seconds.

:config.verbose:
  Optional. Toggles wether the component shall log debugging information.

:config.count:
  Optional. After how many successful pings the component exits successfully.


Sessions
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This is an overview of the sessions required and provided by the
component apart from the environment sessions:

* Requires one Timer session.