Ping remote sever, nc, telnet, whatever

I put this thread to shell and bsd, because I want to resolve this matter on bsd.
May somebody can explain to me how to ping a remote server, in unix. BTW the following code examples were tried on a linux system as well, with the same output, nothing. But on my bsd are not installed nmap neither netcat.
Furthermore there are more than one high anonymous or just anonymous servers, this is just one.

I tried so far the following commands (on linux)

nc -v -w 1 133.242.225.54 -z 80

output

133.242.225.54: inverse host lookup failed: Unknown host
(UNKNOWN) [133.242.225.54] 80 (http) : Connection timed out

Another example with telnet (on linux)

telnet 133.242.225.54/80

output (quote) no typing error:

telnet: could not resolve 133.242.225.54/80/telnet: Name or service not known

without the port

telnet 133.242.225.54
Trying 133.242.225.54...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out

and as well ping as follows

ping -c1 -w3 133.242.225.54
PING 133.242.225.54 (133.242.225.54) 56(84) bytes of data.

output

--- 133.242.225.54 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2000ms

Does this mean the remote server is up? At least ping sent three packets, zero loss. But is it on air?
I am aware there are tries with the destination port and tries without it. If someone could give me a hint I really could go on. Thanks in advance.

If you are looking to see if something is listening on port 80, you were close with telnet.

telnet <ip> <port> # not <ip>/<port>

Without the port, telnet will try the default telnet port (port 23).
On most modern unix system telnet is disabled due to security reasons (plain text over network, no encryption etc.), in turn you got (which means telnet is not active on the remote server) :

telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out

Ping will tell you that the server is alive and responding to ICMP requests.
ICMP is also quite often blocked on firewalls, due to ICMP flooding exploits and alike.

Hope that clears things out.
Regards
Peasant.

1 Like

Its getting clearer, but I (as a user) want to connect to a high anonymous or an anonymous remote server (lets say as a proxy). Which mostly use (any of them) port 80, port 8080 or 3021, so even with a firewall installed there, a simple ping should work. It's not about ssh on port 22 or vpn. Before connecting, I want to here a positive response, server on air. Thats my intention.

Ping against server will work if firewall allows ICMP probes.

If a server service is listening on port N, a simple telnet IP port will tell you that.
Something like :

:~$ telnet www.unix.com 80
Trying 4.59.125.171...
Connected to www.unix.com.
Escape character is '^]'.

This tells me that 4.59.125.171 has a port 80 open are receiving requests.

For further (security ;)) analysis nmap is the best tool.
Port Scanning is Not a Crime but acting on its results can be, especially on government and financial sites.

Regards
Peasant.

ping transmitted three packets but didn't receive any: 100% packet loss, not zero!
It doesn't seem to be "on air" unless those packets are intercepted by some firewall.