Before writing about Ping sweep, i would like to introduce Ping. Ping is a network based utility which is used to know if a host is alive or dead on the network. Suppose i want to check for hackingtricks.in
if we get the response it means website is live. You can check for a system by its IP address or a website by its domain name. We can use this program to detect host like website, computer system, printer, network or any device.Ping Sweep:Ping Sweep also known as ICMP sweep is a network scanning technique which is used to determine which of a range of IP addresses map to live hosts. As we have seen in Ping, which is used for single computer. This is used for a renge of IP address for various computers. ping sweep consists of ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) ECHO requests sent to multiple hosts. If a system (HOST) is live, it will reply with ICMP ECHO reply.
There are a various tools available that can be used to do a ping sweep, such as fping, gping, and nmap.
Download Fping here: http://fping.sourceforge.net/
