You'll be pinging a lot while studying for your CCNA and CCNP exams, especially if you're doing hands-on practice in your home lab or rack rental. As a CCNA or CCNP candidate, I know that 5 exclamation points (!!!!!) as a ping return indicates that there is her IP connectivity to the remote target. Five dots (.....) indicate that this connection is missing.
Knowing that there is no IP connectivity for her to the remote device is not enough, we need to know why. Ping is a good first step in network troubleshooting, but the results are rather limited. As CCNAs and CCNPs, we need to know how to diagnose and solve problems. Looking at the routing table is not enough. The powerful Cisco Debug, Debug IP package can often pinpoint where the problem is.
warning:
Do not run debug ip packet on a production router without understanding the effect this command has on your router. Running this command produces a lot of output and can actually block your router.
In this case, we'll run the command on a home lab router that cannot ping 22.2.2.2. The debug will be turned on and another ping sent.
- R1#debug ip packet
- IP packet debugging is on
- R1#ping 22.2.2.2
- Type escape sequence to abort.
- Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 22.2.2.2, timeout is 2 seconds:
- 3d23h: IP: s=1.1.1.1 (local), d=22.2.2.2, len 100, unroutable.
- R1#undebug all
All possible debugging has been turned off
I've edited this output for clarity; the important word is "unroutable". This indicates that the packet is not leaving the router because there is no match in the routing table for this destination. We'll configure a static default route and send the ping again.
- R1#ping 22.2.2.2
- Type escape sequence to abort.
- Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 22.2.2.2, timeout is 2 seconds:
- U.U.U
- Success rate is 0 percent (0/5)
That output may surprise those of you who are used to getting five of the same symbol back whenever you send a ping. We got three "U"s back along with two periods. We'll now run debug ip packet and send the ping again.
- R1#debug ip packet
- IP packet debugging is on
- R1#ping 22.2.2.2
- Type escape sequence to abort.
- Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 22.2.2.2, timeout is 2 seconds:
- 3d23h: IP: s=172.12.123.1 (local), d=22.2.2.2 (Serial0), len 100, sending
- R1#traceroute 22.2.2.2
- Type escape sequence to abort.
- Tracing the route to 22.2.2.2
- 1 172.12.123.2 36 msec 36 msec 36 msec
- 2 172.12.123.2 !H * !H
- R1#undebug all
All possible debugging has been turned off
Again, I've edited this output. The key word in this output is "sending", meaning that the packets are leaving the router. The ping return of "U.U.U" is a general indication that the packets are indeed being transmitted, but that a downstream router is having a problem routing the packets.
Running traceroute reveals some more interesting return characters! In this case, the downstream router did not have a match for the destination in its routing table.
It's easy to concentrate on the local router when you're not getting positive ping returns. When troubleshooting this kind of issue, keep in mind the problem could be on an intermediate router and not on the local router.
Use debug ip packet to make sure the packets are leaving the local router, and traceroute to determine what downstream router may have the problem. And get used to the fact that pings and traceroutes can give you some unusual-looking returns!
