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Status Not under consideration
Workspace z/OS
Categories Communications Server
Created by Guest
Created on Dec 15, 2022

RELATED IDEAS

Record number of ping requests and responses for TCPIP (By interface), as a network debugging aid

I've spend days trying to configure IP V6 and z/OS, (also with 2 TCP images on one LPAR).

It has been very hard to see if traffic has got to z/OS, and if the reply came back.

With midrange I can use Wireshark. The equivalent packet trace on z/OS is very hard to do.

If the TCPIP address space kept a count of the number of ping requests by interface, it would make debugging connectivity problems much simpler.

For example if the "ping count" stayed constant - it means my request did not get to the interface. If the value goes up - it means that a ping is getting through ( it may not be mine... but it may be)

If we also had the ping replies returned, this would give additional information. It means a response got as far as here....

I had a problem where the return route was incorrectly specified - and so the response was thrown away.


I blogged https://colinpaice.blog/2022/12/12/understanding-ping-and-why-it-does-not-answer/

to help other people.


The idea suggested above may not be 100% reliable but it would be a great help to those

who have to configure networks.


Idea priority Medium
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Feb 16, 2023
    After reviewing your request, it is being rejected because we have determined that this is not something likely to be implemented. For the enhancement you suggested, it would provide data that would be hard to determine whether your ping made it in and out of the TCP/IP stack. For example, as you mentioned, other ping requests could be occurring at the time. Also, there is no guarantee that the response to the ping request will go out the same interface that the request did - so there would be the problem of trying to match up requests and responses across all the interfaces.
    A couple of suggestions for troubleshooting a scenario like this in the future. First, use the traceroute command from a remote system to confirm that network connectivity is at least good all the way to the router serving as a next hop for the z/OS system trying to be reached. And second, you mentioned that using packet trace on z/OS is hard to do. It should be as simple as using the VARY TCPIP,,PKTTRACE command, and specify filtering options to limit tracing to ICMP messages "PROT=ICMP" to the IP address you are trying to ping "IP=ipaddr". Once captured, you have the ability to convert the packet trace so that it is viewable from wireshark, if you are more familiar with that tool than IPCS formatters.

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