How to implement PsPing TCP ping in C#

Question

I am trying to implement Mark Russinovich\'s SysInternals PsPing tool in C# to measure latencies using TCP ping.

I am not sure how it makes the ping call (apparently

Answer 1

I have tried several approaches, first thinking I had to use raw sockets or at least use native calls, but a simple TCP connect and close seems to create exactly the same results as the psping utility:

var times = new List();
for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++)
{
    var sock = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork, SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp);
    sock.Blocking = true;

    var stopwatch = new Stopwatch();

    // Measure the Connect call only
    stopwatch.Start();
    sock.Connect(endPoint);
    stopwatch.Stop();

    double t = stopwatch.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds;
    Console.WriteLine("{0:0.00}ms", t);
    times.Add(t);

    sock.Close();

    Thread.Sleep(1000);
}
Console.WriteLine("{0:0.00} {1:0.00} {2:0.00}", times.Min(), times.Max(), times.Average());

Inspecting the traffic using Wireshark, I can confirm both psping and the snippet above are creating exactly the same sequence of packets.

-> [SYN]
<- [SYN,ACK]
-> [ACK]
-> [FIN,ACK]
<- [FIN,ACK]
-> [ACK]

Output from psping with no warm-up and using TCP ping:

C:\>psping -w 0 stackoverflow.com:80

PsPing v2.01 - PsPing - ping, latency, bandwidth measurement utility
Copyright (C) 2012-2014 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

TCP connect to 198.252.206.16:80:
4 iterations (warmup 0) connecting test:
Connecting to 198.252.206.16:80: 92.30ms
Connecting to 198.252.206.16:80: 83.16ms
Connecting to 198.252.206.16:80: 83.29ms
Connecting to 198.252.206.16:80: 82.98ms

TCP connect statistics for 198.252.206.16:80:
  Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
  Minimum = 82.98ms, Maximum = 92.30ms, Average = 85.43ms

Output from the program above:

C:\>TcpPing.exe stackoverflow.com 80
88.60ms
83.65ms
84.05ms
84.05ms
83.65 88.60 85.09

As for measurements, I must say, sometimes there are quite a few different results at different runs, but overall they seemed pretty close: kind of proves measuring the Connect() call is good enough. I'm thinking, taking a median of a few hundred results might prove it with a bit more confidence.