Skip to content

Page permalink

Always use the following permalink when referencing this page. It will remain unchanged in future help versions.

https://docs.sophos.com/nsg/sophos-firewall/23.0/Help/en-us/webhelp/onlinehelp/index.html?contextId=tools-ping-traceroute-lookups

Ping, traceroute, and lookups

You can run ping and traceroute checks from the web admin console. You can also run name and route lookups.

Ping

Ping is the most common network administration utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network and to measure the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer.

Ping sends ICMP echo requests to test the connectivity to other hosts. The output shows if the response was received, packets transmitted and received, packet loss, and round-trip time. If a host isn't responding, ping shows 100 percent packet loss.

You can specify the following settings:

Setting Description
IP address or hostname Specify the IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) or fully qualified domain name you want to ping.
IP family Select the IP version (IPv4 or IPv6).
Interface Select the interface through which the ICMP echo requests are to be sent.
Size

Specify the ping packet size (in bytes).

Default: 32 bytes

Size range: 1 to 65507

Traceroute

Traceroute traces the path taken by a packet from the source system to the destination system. The output shows all the routers through which data packets pass from the source system to the destination system, maximum hops, and total time taken by the packet to return (measured in milliseconds).

Traceroute tool on web admin console

  1. Sign in to the web admin console.
  2. Go to Diagnostics > Tools.

  3. Enter the required details under the Traceroute section. You can specify the following settings:

    Setting Description
    IP address or hostname Specify the IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) or fully qualified domain name.
    IP version Select the IP version (IPv4 or IPv6).
    Interface Select the interface through which you want to send the requests.

  4. Click Traceroute to view route information between the device and specified IP address.

Traceroute tool from CLI

  1. Sign in to the web admin console.
  2. Go to admin > Console and press Enter.
  3. Enter your password.
  4. Select 4. Device Console and press Enter.

  5. Run one of the following commands. See Traceroute.

    • IPv4: traceroute <IPv4 ADDRESS>
    • IPv6: traceroute6 <IPv6 ADDRESS>

DNS lookup

You can use DNS lookup to query the domain name service for information about domain names and IP addresses. It sends a domain name query packet to a configured domain name system (DNS) server. If you enter a domain name, the server returns the associated IP address. If you enter an IP address, the server returns the associated domain name.

You can specify the following settings:

  • Hostname or IP address: IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) or fully qualified domain name (FQDN) to resolve.

  • DNS server IP address: Select the DNS server to send the query to. Select an available server or select one of the following options:

    • All configured servers: Look up using all the configured DNS servers in the device. Selecting this option will also provide information about the time taken by each DNS server to resolve the query. Based on the response time of each server, you can prioritize the DNS server.
    • Custom DNS server: Look up using a manually specified DNS server. Enter the IP address of the custom DNS server.
    • Custom DoH server: Look up using a manually specified DoH server. Enter the IP address of the custom DoH server.
    • DNS Protection: Look up using DNS Protection. This option is only available if you've turned on DNS Protection in Network > DNS.

Route lookup

If you have routable networks and want to search through which interface the device routes the traffic, you can look up the route. To do this, enter the IP address (IPv4 or IPv6).