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Review:The Story about Ping
from the it-all-makes-sense-now dept.
The book describes networking in terms even a child could understand, choosing to anthropomorphize the underlying packet structure. The ping packet is described as a duck, who, with other packets (more ducks), spends a certain period of time on the host machine (the wise-eyed boat). At the same time each day (I suspect this is scheduled under cron), the little packets (ducks) exit the host (boat) by way of a bridge (a bridge). From the bridge, the packets travel onto the internet (here embodied by the Yangtze River).
The title character -- er, packet, is called Ping. Ping meanders around the river before being received by another host (another boat). He spends a brief time on the other boat, but eventually returns to his original host machine (the wise-eyed boat) somewhat the worse for wear.
The book avoids many of the cliches one might expect. For example, with a story set on a river, the authors might have sunk to using that tired old plot device: the flood ping. The authors deftly avoid this.
Who Should Buy This Book
If you need a good, high-level overview of the ping utility, this is the book. I can't recommend it for most managers, as the technical aspects may be too overwhelming and the basic concepts too daunting.
Problems With This Book
As good as it is, The Story About Ping is not without its faults. There is no index, and though the ping(8) man pages cover the command line options well enough, some review of them seems to be in order. Likewise, in a book solely about Ping, I would have expected a more detailed overview of the ICMP packet structure.
But even with these problems, The Story About Ping has earned a place on my bookshelf, right between Stevens' Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment, and my dog-eared copy of Dante's seminal work on MS Windows, Inferno. Who can read that passage on the Windows API ("Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous, So that by fixing on its depths my sight -- Nothing whatever I discerned therein."), without shaking their head with deep understanding. But I digress.
For my next review, I will discuss the internals of several well-known routing protocols as described in the Old Testament. New contemporary evidence points to the possibility that Job was a sysadmin on an early MULTICS system.
Buy this book over here and Slashdot gets a little money. It'll buy Rob and I 0.5 beer.
Doc Technical is not a real doctor, nor does he play one on TV. Hell, Doc Technical could never even fit on a TV. Well, maybe a bigscreen.
Further trivial recollection. (Score:1)
I remember hearing that story, too (though I can't vouch for the "original TCP/IP guru" part). FWIW, I think he was using either a NeXT or a Sun in the version I heard, and the sound played was a sample of the person's voice, saying "ping."
Read it in a magazine some time in the 1980s, I guess (how's that for rigorous references?). The incident I'm thinking of could have been a copycat of the one you're thinking of, mind you...
*That* Explains It! (Score:1)
The real ping? (Score:1)
I keep a script around for doing exactly that, because a couple of my network segments have chronic problems... when they start getting flaky, I start the script up and wander around wiggling connectors until I hear the "ping!".
#!/bin/sh
/dev/null /dev/null
while [ true ]; do
echo -n "ping"
ping $1 -c 1 | grep "1 packets received" >
if [ $? = 0 ]; then
echo " PING!"
wavplay ding.wav >
else
echo ""
fi
done
ROTFLMAO (Score:1)
If we could just convince them to continue such education...
you guys keep amazing me... (Score:1)
it will be a colector's item in about 30 years...
it's a sure investment...:\
Thanks (Score:1)
e.
Abraham's journey, Old Testiment (Score:1)
In genisis Abraham is told to go on a journey, but he isn't told how to get where he is going, or why. Just a Get thee to Cannon. Obviously a foreshaddow of Layered packets where the content is of no importance, and while the destination is generally known, routers in between decide how where you will go next. Moses took the Children of Iseral on a similear journey, but he was hampered by the fact that like a true man he refused to ask the routers direction, and wanderd 40 years before he died, and his successor promptly asked which(1) direction and arrived.
Jumping forward a bit, we find King david who finger(1) anouther man's wife, and eventially got her with a child process. This (remembering the cultural differences of those days) made it nessicary for him to kill(1) the other man(1). He accomplished this via a different person, obviously a foreshadowing of distributed processing.
There is of course more to be found in this wonderful book or prophcies, but now that I've wet your appitie perhaps you want to read it yourself.
Abraham's journey, Old Testiment (Score:1)
In genisis Abraham is told to go on a journey, but he isn't told how to get where he is going, or why. Just a Get thee to Cannon. Obviously a foreshaddow of Layered packets where the content is of no importance, and while the destination is generally known, routers in between decide how where you will go next. Moses took the Children of Iseral on a similear journey, but he was hampered by the fact that like a true man he refused to ask the routers direction, and wanderd 40 years before he died, and his successor promptly asked which(1) direction and arrived.
Jumping forward a bit, we find King david who finger(1) anouther man's wife, and eventially got her with a child process. This (remembering the cultural differences of those days) made it nessicary for him to kill(1) the other man(1). He accomplished this via a different person, obviously a foreshadowing of distributed processing.
There is of course more to be found in this wonderful book or prophcies, but now that I've wet your appitie perhaps you want to read it yourself.
Old Testament? (Score:1)
Computer Science Sesame Street (Score:1)
http://www.cs.newcastle.edu.au/~c95117 13/sesem [newcastle.edu.au]
Gee, is it April 1st already? (Score:1)
Hahaha... (Score:1)
What about those other great technical manuals, Jack and the Device Tree and Goldilocks and the Three BSD's?
Price Check (Score:1)
Rob, Hemos, does Slashdot's commission deal also work with Amazon.co.uk too? I could maybe use that more than the US version?
Regards, Ralph.
The first book you need is a dictionary (Score:1)
Silliness, Silliness (Score:1)
David E. Weekly (dew)
Ping! (Score:1)
Inferno? (Score:1)
And YOU need to look up "Sense of Humor" (Score:1)
Inferno? (Score:1)
Gordon
Oh the gullibility... (Score:1)
thought this was a real book
for any decent period of time?
It wasn't until I tried the
Amazon link that I found it
was a children's book.
I suppose after the fake
JWZ death post, it would
have been more obvious
that this was tongue in
cheek.
I *DID* think it was funny (Score:1)
but it was much more funny that I
read the whole review believing that
some Unix nerds of the 60s wrote
a book about ping
Beautiful. Simply beautiful (Score:1)
Waiting for Godot (Score:1)
Good one. :-) (Score:1)
Keep up the good work, "Doc Technical" - just not on a Monday, OK?
________________________
We Used This in our LAB! (Score:1)
And now, as far as I know, it's at another big networking company (I forget the name; I think it starts with '3'). Hey Willie, you still got it?
An absolute 'must read'. Thrilling drama. It taught me a lot when I was starting out.
Have a great day, everyone.
Oh my god!!!!!! (Score:1)
(Clearly, it was subtle impressioning which would lead me towards Unix in the future.)
Recursion Textbook (Score:1)
I had this book! (Score:1)
VMole.
*That* Explains It! (Score:1)
Can someone tell me what the ring around Ping's neck to prevent Ping from swallowing whole fish meant in the metaphor?
Actually, it is . . . (Score:1)
That covers all animalae.
I suppose you could say avepomorphize, and just go to the birds.
And I for one am shocked (SHOCKED, I SAY!) at the appalling lack of knowledge concerning classical languages evidenced by
Carpe Aptenodytes (sieze the penguins)!
Crackwhore (Score:1)
Sorry.
Ooh goody, children's books. (Score:1)
Ooh goody, children's books. ROTFLMFAO!!! (Score:1)
Shouldn't it be more this way. (Score:1)
On each boat, the boat's captain sees his copy of the duck and looks at its collar. Now the boat captains on this river are all bloodthirsty. All boat captains who don't recognize the duck, immediately kill it.
If Captain Stallman is on that section of the river, and he sees the duck with the collar with his name on it, he accepts the duck with a big hug. He feeds the duck, then retags it with Captain Torvalds name and puts the duck back on the river.
The duck once again mysteriously shows up on everyone's boat. Where in we get another bloodbath of ducks being killed. Captain Torvalds sees however that his duck has returned. He is happy to know his friend Captain Stallman is on the river. He then kills the duck anyway, knowing it has served its purpose.
Now if Captain Stallman and Captain Torvalds are on two different sections of rivers separated by a lock, the lockmaster will help out and transport the duck between the two sections of river, but he never bothers to feed the duck. Just like on the first river section, the duck multiplies on each boat (and other locks). More blood is spilled. Other locks will let the duck pass, but after awhile, if the duck can't find Captain Stallman, the duck dies of starvation.
The end.
*That* Explains It! (Score:1)
Inferno? (Score:1)
A book about traceroute? (Score:1)
Will Tim O'Reilly sue? (Score:1)
Oh, this was written in 1933? That shouldn't matter! I'm sure the patent office wouldn't view it as prior art.
Got one, thanks... (Score:1)
More succinctly, what we have here is perhaps best described as meta-anthropomorphism, where networking concepts are metaphorically described in terms of animals, who themselves are given anthropomorphic characteristics.
Thanks for attempting to clarify Doc Technical's use of the english language, unless your actual intent was to make him look stupid.
In that latter case, Doc Technical can but say, bite me.
Doc Technical
"Practice random acts of intelligence & senseless acts of self-control."
Pinging duck (Score:1)
It's about a duck who pinged a lot: he pinged all the way to Antartica. Obviously he was called the pinging duck. Later he was called 'pinging' and eventually just 'pinguin'.
And we all know what happened to this pinguin during the 1990's.
Thwas/is my favorite childhood book (Score:1)
It's intriguing to note that in the end, ping was a bad packet; further, all successful packets must be bad and therefore harshly processed at the local host.
Now, if someone can just explain what was up with the breadcrumbs and those diving birds....
Dr. Science for the rest of us... (Score:1)
Not the only one! WooHoo! (Score:1)
Nice to know there is someone else in the world who made the connection.
Ping (Score:1)
Benjamin Meyer
NW Admin
Senior @ AHS
Old Testament-[OT?] and OpenSource (Score:1)
lol (Score:1)
---
gr0k - he got juju eyeballs - http://www.juju.org [juju.org]