tcp-ping

tcp-ping
========

TCP ping utility for node.js. You can test if chosen address accepts connections at desired port and find out your latency. Great for service availability testing.

#####Why not ``ping` wrapper?

* It's much faster than `ping` tool (as soon as connection gets accepted, it's dropped and a new measure is conducted immediately), so there's no unnecessary waiting between requests.
* It allows you to test a specific service, not the whole connection
* Some servers drop ICMP echo without any response, even when online. TCP can work in such cases.

###Install

`
npm install tcp-ping
`

###Functions

#####ping(options, callback)

`options` is an object, which may contain several properties:

* address (address to ping; defaults to `localhost`)
* port (defaults to `80`)
* timeout (in ms; defaults to 5s)
* attempts (how many times to measure time; defaults to 10)

`callback` should be a function with arguments in node convention - `function(err, data)`.

Returned data is an object which looks like this:
`javascript
{
address: '46.28.246.123',
port: 80,
attempts: 10,
avg: 19.7848844,
max: 35.306233,
min: 16.526067,
results:
[
{ seq: 0, time: 35.306233 },
{ seq: 1, time: 16.585919 },
...
{ seq: 9, time: 17.625968 }
]
}
`

#####probe(address, port, callback)
`callback` is a node style callback `function(err, data)`, where data is true if the server is available and false otherwise.

###Usage

`javascript
var tcpp = require('tcp-ping');

tcpp.probe('46.28.246.123', 80, function(err, available) {
console.log(available);
});

tcpp.ping({ address: '46.28.246.123' }, function(err, data) {
console.log(data);
});
``