Install arping on Raspberry Pi

We can send ICMP requests to another host to test whether host is reachable. However, ICMP requests can be blocked by firewalls. The arping is a command line tool that enables to send ARP requests to another host on the same network to test reachability of the host.

This tutorial shows how to install arping on Raspberry Pi.

Connect to Raspberry Pi via SSH. Update the package lists and install arping using these commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y arping

When arping is installed, we can check version.

arping -v

Now we can use arping command and provide IP address of the host as argument in order to ping host:

sudo arping -c 3 192.168.0.150

The command will provide output similar to the following:

ARPING 192.168.0.150
60 bytes from df:bf:a7:05:66:dc (192.168.0.150): index=0 time=2.446 msec
60 bytes from df:bf:a7:05:66:dc (192.168.0.150): index=1 time=2.493 msec
60 bytes from df:bf:a7:05:66:dc (192.168.0.150): index=2 time=2.430 msec

--- 192.168.0.150 statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received,   0% unanswered (0 extra)
rtt min/avg/max/std-dev = 2.430/2.456/2.493/0.027 ms

The -c option defines the number of packets to be sent.

If you decided to completely uninstall arping and related dependencies, run the following command:

sudo apt purge --autoremove -y arping