Net::Ping Response

set_uk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I would like to know what the meanings of the default timeout and timeout options mean in relation to Net::Ping.
This may seem like a dumb question but depending on what they are set to the response time of the ping is affected.
If set to 1 I get a reponse of .15 from the following script. If set to 5 I get a response of 4.
Shouldn't the way it work be - if we get a response then continue as soon as we get it?? I also find that this bears no relation to the ms response I get from the command line ping utility. Is this because Net::Ping is timing the perl code and perl is slower than the os binary?

sub Ping{
    my ($self,$host) = @_;  
    my $p = Net::Ping->new("external",1,80);
    $p->hires();
    print "HOST->".$host."\n";
    my ($ret, $dur, $ip)  = $p->ping($host);
    print "RET->".$ret."\n";
    print "DUR->".$dur."\n";
    print "IP->".$ip."\n";
    if (defined($ret)){
        return $ret;
    } else {
        return undef;
    }
}
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Comment on Net::Ping Response Download Code

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Re: Net::Ping Response by pg (Canon) on Oct 21, 2003 at 16:14 UTC
timeout is the amount of time you are willing to wait before the response come back. duration returned from ping function call is the elapsed time (response time). Duration shall be less than timeout, and that's what you observed.	[reply]
Re: Re: Net::Ping Response by set_uk (Pilgrim) on Oct 21, 2003 at 16:19 UTC
How can I set it up so that it returns when we get a response back from the device. The timeout appears to be interfering with the response	[reply]
Re: Net::Ping Response by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Oct 21, 2003 at 16:35 UTC
Is this because Net::Ping is timing the perl code and perl is slower than the os binary? Well, since you use 'external' as the protocol, Net::Ping is using your systems ping utility. Abigail	[reply]
Re: Re: Net::Ping Response by pg (Canon) on Oct 21, 2003 at 17:28 UTC
Also I checked the source code for both Net::Ping and Net::Ping::External, and they seem okay to me. They didn’t use timeout value in any funny way. Actually on some platform, timeout value is even not used (Net::Ping::External does not pass it to the system ping facility), if that particular ping facility on that platform actually does not support timeout.	[reply]
Re: Re: Net::Ping Response by set_uk (Pilgrim) on Oct 21, 2003 at 21:06 UTC
Yes but the time value for response that was returned did not appear to represent the output that I would have gotten had I used ping from the command line. I gave up in the end and put something together using sudo and fping.	[reply]