How can I set a short timeout with the ping command?

Solution 1:

fping might be a better tool than the stock ping you are using. What OS are you on?

"fping differs from ping in that you can specify any number of targets on the command line, or specify a file containing the lists of targets to ping."
"Instead of sending to one target until it times out or replies, fping will send out a ping packet and move on to the next target in a round-robin fashion."
"Unlike ping, fping is meant to be used in scripts, so its output is designed to be easy to parse."

Solution 2:

For people looking for a solution that involves ping, use the -i switch.

ping -i 0.2 www.google.com

Or, if you want to use 0.1, you'll need to run it as root

sudo ping -i 0.1 www.google.com

No need to download extra utilities.

Solution 3:

You can set a short timeout with the timeout command on Ubuntu/Debian:

timeout 0.2 ping -c1 fqdn || { do_work }

Solution 4:

I would be using nmap for this task.

nmap -sP --max-retries=1 --host-timeout=1500ms 10.0.0.1

See the nmap Documentation for more details on this.

Solution 5:

Use -w switch, both on Windows and Debian.

It's a quick way to check if machine responds at all, assuming it'll respond in time less then specified amount of seconds.

ping -w 1 192.168.80.105

PING 192.168.80.105 (192.168.80.105) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- 192.168.80.105 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 999ms