wping is similar to ping, except it tries to produce more useful output
Estimating packet loss with ping usually involves either eyeballing
the output or developing an intuition for the percentage of lost
packets by looking at the timing of the output. Alternatively, one can
run it in a loop and observe the cumulative statistics that ping
prints out when it exits, then try to follow them over time. We can do
better.
wping calculates and displays an exponential weighted moving average
(EWMA) of the round-trip time and apparent packet loss. For the
purposes of calculating the packet loss, a packet is considered lost
if no response has been received within smoothed(RTT) + 2 *
variation(RTT). If, however, a response arrives for a previously sent
packet, wping will revise the packet loss upward.
When the apparent packet loss drops below 1% (i.e. when packet losses are far enough in the past), the packet loss is reported as 0%.
The EWMA calculation is performed according to RFC6298.
Updated statistics are printed once per send interval: when a response is received or, failing that, when the next probe is about to be sent.
On a loopback interface with emulated packet loss:
$ sudo wping 127.0.0.1
Seq RTT smooth RTT RTT variation Packet loss
1 315 us 315 us 157 us 0%
- - 315 us 157 us 12%
3 335 us 318 us 123 us 11%
4 346 us 321 us 99 us 10%
5 339 us 323 us 79 us 8%
6 131 us 299 us 107 us 7%
7 128 us 278 us 123 us 6%
8 322 us 283 us 103 us 6%
- - 283 us 103 us 17%
10 134 us 265 us 115 us 15%
11 332 us 273 us 103 us 13%
- - 273 us 103 us 24%
13 138 us 256 us 111 us 21%
14 315 us 264 us 98 us 18%
- - 264 us 98 us 29%
16 139 us 248 us 104 us 25%
17 324 us 258 us 97 us 22%
18 126 us 241 us 106 us 19%
19 124 us 226 us 108 us 17%
20 309 us 237 us 102 us 15%
21 318 us 247 us 96 us 13%
The default send interval is 1s and the adaptive packet loss window includes 20 probes (the effects of a packet loss event drop to below 1% after that). On Linux, you can avoid the need for sudo by setting the appropriate capability on the executable:
```
```
``` Usage: wping [OPTIONS] [ADDRESS]
positional arguments: address Target ipv4 address
optional arguments: -h,--help show this help message and exit -i Send interval --window WINDOW Adaptive packet loss calculation for the last N probes -x,--extended Include additional information in the output ```