Pinging.net
Pinging.net quickly determines if you are online by running multiple tests. It then continues to monitor your connection via repeated tests including a "web ping" every second to help identify intermittent network issues.
Project goals
- Reliable. Do not make the user guess if the website isn't loading because of their internet or if the website is down.
- Fast website. Do not make the user wait, even on a slow connection. Time to first paint, total page size, and time to first test result should all be minimal.
- Provide multiple tests that all work with just the browser.
- Possible to understand test results for non-technical users.
- Provide concise educational descriptions and links to learn more.
- Allow for hosting outside of pinging.net (e.g. on private clouds).
Non-goals (currently):
- Speed test. There are many websites that provide this and the hosting costs would increase dramatically.
The Tests
Web Ping
A Web Ping is sent every second. Ping is a common network testing utility. A packet is sent to a computer over the network which replies with a response packet. If and how fast a response is received help determine network connection quality. Normally ping packets are sent using the ICMP protocol but that is not possible from a web page. Instead a WebRTC data channel message is sent to and returned from the server. UDP is used for the underlying transport mechanism so dropped messages are not retried which is desired in order to determine packet loss.
The round trip time of each ping is graphed as a dark green horizontal line for each second. It is also displayed in milliseconds for the last received ping and the average for all successful pings.
Packet loss is when a ping response is not received. It is graphed as a red square. The percent of all pings that were lost is also displayed. Packet loss is caused by many different factors and potentially indicates issues with your internet connection.
HTTP Test
Makes a HTTP POST request with a random string body and verifies it is returned properly. Caching of the request is also explicitly disabled. This test is run every 30 seconds.
DNS Test
Test DNS is working by making a HTTP GET request to a [random-number]dns-check.pinging.net. Caching is explicitly disabled and the random number part of the subdomain prevents common caching of the DNS lookup. This test is run every 30 seconds.
Browser Check
Web browsers report if they believe you are offline. If this check is failing it means you are likely not connected to your WiFi, cellular connection or ethernet cord. This is a basic check and it will often pass even if you are not connected. This check is continuously monitored by your browser.
Initial Load Check
Caching is disabled for this site so if this site loads it is a strong indication your internet is working at the time of loading the site.
Architecture
The backend is a single binary written in Rust that handles static file serving, APIs (including WebRTC), and www and https redirects. The frontend is static html and TypeScript. Pinging.net is deployed to inexpensive virtual private servers in multiple data centers and a DNS load balancer (currently CloudFlare) is used to route traffic to the closest server.
Since there is no protocol level load balancer (e.g. HTTP/WebRTC) or reverse proxy (e.g. no nginx), deployments are done by spinning up a new server and switching the DNS load balancer to use the new IP. The old IP is kept running for an hour to allow DNS caches to update and existing clients to refresh to the new server.
Building and Running
Ensure the following dependencies are installed:
- rust
- nodejs
- npm
- jq
Then run scripts/build (build only), scripts/run_locally (build and run locally), or scripts/deploy (build then deploy to IP address).
Currently only Linux is tested. I am open to contributions to help with developing or running on other platforms.
Contributing
Contributions are welcome. Thanks in advance for your help.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to all of the authors of the dependencies and utilities that made pinging possible.
License and Copyright
Licensed under Apache-2.0. Copyrights are retained by their contributors.
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