SSH ping

SSH-based ping that measures interactive character echo latency and file transfer throughput. Pronounced "shipping".

A continuation and re-work of the original ssh-ping in Rust.

Installation

Cargo

sshping is published on crates.io, you can install it with (first having rust toolchain installed):

cargo install sshping

You can also opt in to the include-openssl feature to bundle OpenSSL with the binary, for rare cases where the system OpenSSL is not available:

cargo install sshping -F include-openssl

Pre-built binaries

Pre-built binaries are available on the releases page. You can download the binary for your platform and put it in your $PATH.

Note that all pre-built binaries are built with the include-openssl feature enabled, so they are self-contained and do not require OpenSSL to be installed on the system.

From source

To install from source, you can clone the repository first:

git clone git@github.com:TeddyHuang-00/sshping.git
# Or
git clone https://github.com/TeddyHuang-00/sshping.git

# Then
cd sshping

Then build and install it with cargo:

cargo install --path .

As with the include-openssl feature, you can also enable it when installing from source:

cargo install --path . -F include-openssl

Usage

Usage: sshping [OPTIONS] <TARGET>

Arguments:
  <TARGET>  [user@]host[:port]

Options:
  -f, --config <FILE>            Read the ssh config file FILE for options [default:
                                 ~/.ssh/config]
  -i, --identity <FILE>          Use identity FILE, i.e., ssh private key file
  -p, --password <PWD>           Use password PWD for authentication (not recommended)
  -T, --ssh-timeout <SECONDS>    Time limit for ssh connection in seconds [default: 10]
  -r, --run-tests <TEST>         Run TEST [default: both] [possible values: echo, speed,
                                 both]
  -c, --char-count <COUNT>       Number of characters to echo [default: 1000]
  -e, --echo-cmd <CMD>           Use CMD for echo command [default: "cat > /dev/null"]
  -t, --echo-timeout <SECONDS>   Time limit for echo test in seconds
  -s, --size <SIZE>              File SIZE for speed test [default: 8.0MB]
  -u, --chunk-size <CHUNK_SIZE>  Chunk SIZE for splitting file in speed test [default: 1.0MB]
  -z, --remote-file <FILE>       Remote FILE path for speed tests [default:
                                 /tmp/sshping-test.tmp]
  -b, --table-style <STYLE>      Table style for output [default: ascii] [possible values:
                                 empty, blank, ascii, psql, markdown, modern, sharp,
                                 extended, dots, rst, rounded, ascii-rounded, modern-rounded]
  -d, --delimiter <DELIMITER>    Specify delimiters to use (or None for not using) in big
                                 numbers [default: ,]
  -H, --human-readable           Use human-friendly units
  -k, --key-wait                 Wait for keyboard input before exiting
  -v, --verbose...               Show verbose output, use multiple for more noise
  -h, --help                     Print help (see more with '--help')
  -V, --version                  Print version

Examples

Ping a host from ssh config with human-readable output and modern table style with rounded corners:

$ sshping OverLAN -H -b modern-rounded
╭─────────┬───────────────┬─────────────╮
│  Test   │    Metric     │   Result    │
├─────────┼───────────────┼─────────────┤
│   SSH   │ Connect time  │ 49ms 775us  │
├─────────┼───────────────┼─────────────┤
│         │    Average    │ 177us 731ns │
│         ├───────────────┼─────────────┤
│         │ Std deviation │ 59us 706ns  │
│         ├───────────────┼─────────────┤
│ Latency │    Median     │ 203us 263ns │
│         ├───────────────┼─────────────┤
│         │    Minimum    │ 11us 387ns  │
│         ├───────────────┼─────────────┤
│         │    Maximum    │ 270us 20ns  │
├─────────┼───────────────┼─────────────┤
│         │    Upload     │  153 MB/s   │
│  Speed  ├───────────────┼─────────────┤
│         │   Download    │  89.2 MB/s  │
╰─────────┴───────────────┴─────────────╯

Ping a certain host with username and port, using _ as delimiter and a specific identity file:

$ sshping user@host:7890 -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa -d _
+---------+---------------+-----------------+
|  Test   |    Metric     |     Result      |
+---------+---------------+-----------------+
|   SSH   | Connect time  |  49_725_720ns   |
+---------+---------------+-----------------+
|         |    Average    |    10_268ns     |
|         +---------------+-----------------+
|         | Std deviation |     3_055ns     |
|         +---------------+-----------------+
| Latency |    Median     |     9_773ns     |
|         +---------------+-----------------+
|         |    Minimum    |     8_075ns     |
|         +---------------+-----------------+
|         |    Maximum    |    40_603ns     |
+---------+---------------+-----------------+
|         |    Upload     | 127_897_360 B/s |
|  Speed  +---------------+-----------------+
|         |   Download    | 94_500_777 B/s  |
+---------+---------------+-----------------+

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open an issue or a pull request. Anything from bug report to feature request to code contribution is appreciated.

Currently, there are a few things that can be added but haven't been yet. If you would like to help but don't know where to start, you can check this list below:

• Table style customization
• Unit test
• Man page generation
• Shell autocompletion script generation
• Packaging for various platforms
• More SSH tests
• Better error handling
• Code optimization

FAQ

How to use public-private key pair for authentication?

Using public-private key pair is recommended, you can either provide the identity file (private key) path through -i argument or use agent authentication by adding the identity file to your ssh agent:

# Start SSH agent if you haven't already
eval `ssh-agent -s`
# Add identity to agent (assuming it is `~/.ssh/id_rsa`)
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Why isn't XXX functionality of SSH supported?

Many features like ProxyJump and BindAddress are currently not supported due to the limitation of upstream libraries.

If they got implemented in the upstream libraries, they will be added to this project as well. Or you can open a pull request to add them yourself!

Why isn't all my identity file in SSH config being used?

If more than one identity file is given in the configuration file, only the first one will be used. This is an opinionated design choice to keep the implementation simple.