Ping all IPv6 Neighbors

ping6 can be used on Linux hosts to ping the “allhosts” address, ff02::1. If you try running ping6 ff02::1 with no arguments you will get an error like connect: Invalid argument, instead you must provide the interface to ping from with the -I argument. As an example, to ping all IPv6 hosts that are connected to the eth0 interface:

ping -I eth0 ff02::1

You will get an answer back like this:

root@testsrv:~# ping -I eth0 ff02::1
PING ff02::1(ff02::1) from fe80::45c:20ff:feea:94a5%eth0 eth0: 56 data bytes
64 bytes from fe80::45c:20ff:feea:94a5%eth0: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.074 ms
64 bytes from fe80::fccc:60ff:fe40:db7a%eth0: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.719 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from fe80::e430:aeff:fe2f:da74%eth0: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.06 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from fe80::8618:88ff:fea3:7300%eth0: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.36 ms (DUP!)

One thought on “Ping all IPv6 Neighbors

  1. I love it! I can’t wait to see multiple IPv6 hosts infected by a virus in a few internal PCs and all pinging together! What a mess would that be! Is it not the reason IPv4 stopped responding to broadcast packets? What a mess would that be even with limited responses

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