Zen 3.1 - Product. Data. Code

PingMQ: A SurgeMQ-based ICMP Monitoring Tool

Thu, Dec 25, 2014

pingmq is developed to demonstrate the different use cases one can use SurgeMQ, a high performance MQTT server and client library. In this simplified use case, a network administrator can setup server uptime monitoring system by periodically sending ICMP ECHO_REQUEST to all the IPs in their network, and send the results to SurgeMQ.

Then multiple clients can subscribe to results based on their different needs. For example, a client maybe only interested in any failed ping attempts, as that would indicate a host might be down. After a certain number of failures the client may then raise some type of flag to indicate host down.

There are three benefits of using SurgeMQ for this use case.

First, with all the different monitoring tools out there that wants to know if hosts are up or down, they can all now subscribe to a single source of information. They no longer need to write their own uptime tools.
Second, assuming there are 5 monitoring tools on the network that wants to ping each and every host, the small packets are going to congest the network. The company can save 80% on their uptime monitoring bandwidth by having a single tool that pings the hosts, and have the rest subscribe to the results.
Third/last, the company can enhance their security posture by placing tighter restrictions on their firewalls if there’s only a single host that can send ICMP ECHO_REQUESTS to all other hosts.

The following commands will run pingmq as a server, pinging the 8.8.8.0/28 CIDR block, and publishing the results to /ping/success/{ip} and /ping/failure/{ip} topics every 30 seconds. sudo is needed because we are using RAW sockets and that requires root privilege.

$ go build
$ sudo ./pingmq server -p 8.8.8.0/28 -i 30

The following command will run pingmq as a client, subscribing to /ping/failure/+ topic and receiving any failed ping attempts.

$ ./pingmq client -t /ping/failure/+
8.8.8.6: Request timed out for seq 1

The following command will run pingmq as a client, subscribing to /ping/failure/+ topic and receiving any failed ping attempts.

$ ./pingmq client -t /ping/success/+
8 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=1 ttl=56 tos=32 time=21.753711ms

One can also subscribe to a specific IP by using the following command.

$ ./pingmq client -t /ping/+/8.8.8.8
8 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=1 ttl=56 tos=32 time=21.753711ms

Commands

There are two builtin commands for pingmq.

pingmq server

Usage:
  pingmq server [flags]

 Available Flags:
  -h, --help=false: help for server
  -i, --interval=60: ping interval in seconds
  -p, --ping=[]: Comma separated list of IPv4 addresses to ping
  -q, --quiet=false: print out ping results
  -u, --uri="tcp://:5836": URI to run the server on

pingmq client

Usage:
  pingmq client [flags]

 Available Flags:
  -h, --help=false: help for client
  -s, --server="tcp://127.0.0.1:5836": PingMQ server to connect to
  -t, --topic=[]: Comma separated list of topics to subscribe to

IP Addresses

To list IPs you like to use with pingmq, you can use the following formats:

10.1.1.1      -> 10.1.1.1
10.1.1.1,2    -> 10.1.1.1, 10.1.1.2
10.1.1,2.1    -> 10.1.1.1, 10.1.2.1
10.1.1,2.1,2  -> 10.1.1.1, 10.1.1.2 10.1.2.1, 10.1.2.2
10.1.1.1-2    -> 10.1.1.1, 10.1.1.2
10.1.1.-2     -> 10.1.1.0, 10.1.1.1, 10.1.1.2
10.1.1.1-10   -> 10.1.1.1, 10.1.1.2 ... 10.1.1.10
10.1.1.1-     -> 10.1.1.1 ... 10.1.1.254, 10.1.1.255
10.1.1-3.1    -> 10.1.1.1, 10.1.2.1, 10.1.3.1
10.1-3.1-3.1  -> 10.1.1.1, 10.1.2.1, 10.1.3.1, 10.2.1.1, 10.2.2.1, 10.2.3.1, 10.3.1.1, 10.3.2.1, 10.3.3.1
10.1.1        -> 10.1.1.0, 10.1.1.1 ... 10.1.1.254, 10.1.1.255
10.1.1-2      -> 10.1.1.0, 10.1.1.1 ... 10.1.1.255, 10.1.2.0, 10.1.2.1 ... 10.1.2.255
10.1-2        -> 10.1.0.0, 10.1.0,1 ... 10.2.255.254, 10..2.255.255
10            -> 10.0.0.0 ... 10.255.255.255
10.1.1.2,3,4  -> 10.1.1.1, 10.1.1.2, 10.1.1.3, 10.1.1.4
10.1.1,2      -> 10.1.1.0, 10.1.1.1 ... 10.1.1.255, 10.1.2.0, 10.1.2.1 ... 10.1.2.255
10.1.1/28     -> 10.1.1.0 ... 10.1.1.255
10.1.1.0/28   -> 10.1.1.0 ... 10.1.1.15
10.1.1.0/30   -> 10.1.1.0, 10.1.1.1, 10.1.1.2, 10.1.1.3
10.1.1.128/25 -> 10.1.1.128 ... 10.1.1.255

Topic Format

TO subscribe to the pingmq results, you can use the following formats:

/ping/# will subscribe to both success and failed pings for all IP addresses
ping/success/+ will subscribe to success pings for all IP addresses
ping/failure/+ will subscribe to failed pings for all IP addresses
ping/+/8.8.8.8 will subscribe to both success and failed pings for all IP 8.8.8.8

Building

To build pingmq, you need to have installed Go 1.3.3 or 1.4. Then run the following:

# go get github.com/surge/surgemq
# cd surgemq/examples/pingmq
# go build

After that, you should see the pingmq command in the pingmq directory.