NMAP continuous ping

Question

I need to implement a code which is able to send ping packets each second toward a certain amount of destinations. The problem is that I'd like to ping as much destinations as possible inside 1 second window. For this reason I was thinking if there was a way to impose cycling into nmap [I mean something like -cycle nmap parameter] so that sockets would be opened only once and closed at the end of loop ping, saving way more time than using a "watch nmap" approach!

Answer 1

Part of the Nmap project is the Nping tool. It is designed to do exactly what you want, and is very configurable. Here's an example run:

$ sudo nping --rate 4 --icmp 192.168.1.4/30

Starting Nping 0.6.26SVN ( http://nmap.org/nping ) at 2013-02-08 11:53 CST
SENT (0.0192s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.5 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
SENT (0.2692s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.6 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
SENT (0.5193s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.7 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
SENT (0.7695s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.4 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
SENT (1.0196s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.5 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
SENT (1.2701s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.5 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
RCVD (1.2707s) ICMP 192.168.1.5 > 192.168.1.142 Echo reply (type=0/code=0) ttl=64 id=34160 iplen=28 
SENT (1.5206s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.7 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
SENT (1.7708s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.4 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
SENT (2.0209s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.5 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
SENT (2.2712s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.5 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
RCVD (2.2717s) ICMP 192.168.1.5 > 192.168.1.142 Echo reply (type=0/code=0) ttl=64 id=34161 iplen=28 
SENT (2.5216s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.7 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
SENT (2.7717s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.4 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
SENT (3.0219s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.5 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
SENT (3.2724s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.5 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
RCVD (3.2730s) ICMP 192.168.1.5 > 192.168.1.142 Echo reply (type=0/code=0) ttl=64 id=34162 iplen=28 
SENT (3.5230s) ICMP 192.168.1.142 > 192.168.1.7 Echo request (type=8/code=0) ttl=64 id=53659 iplen=28 
^C 
Statistics for host 192.168.1.4:
 |  Probes Sent: 4 | Rcvd: 0 | Lost: 4  (100.00%)
 |_ Max rtt: N/A | Min rtt: N/A | Avg rtt: N/A
Statistics for host 192.168.1.5:
 |  Probes Sent: 4 | Rcvd: 3 | Lost: 1  (25.00%)
 |_ Max rtt: 0.391ms | Min rtt: 0.263ms | Avg rtt: 0.332ms
Statistics for host 192.168.1.6:
 |  Probes Sent: 4 | Rcvd: 0 | Lost: 4  (100.00%)
 |_ Max rtt: N/A | Min rtt: N/A | Avg rtt: N/A
Statistics for host 192.168.1.7:
 |  Probes Sent: 3 | Rcvd: 0 | Lost: 3  (100.00%)
 |_ Max rtt: N/A | Min rtt: N/A | Avg rtt: N/A
Raw packets sent: 15 (420B) | Rcvd: 3 (138B) | Lost: 12 (80.00%)
Tx time: 3.57078s | Tx bytes/s: 117.62 | Tx pkts/s: 4.20
Rx time: 3.57078s | Rx bytes/s: 38.65 | Rx pkts/s: 0.84
Nping done: 4 IP addresses pinged in 3.59 seconds

Answer 2

You could spawn multiple parallel nmap processes in the command line via:

nmap [options for destination 0] > output0 &

Spawn many such nmap requests for each destination while keeping a running index of the outputX files (output0, output1, etc).. When all your requests are complete, you can examine the contents of each output file