TCPing: Add it to your toolbelt

I've been using this tool for several months now, thanks to the introduction provided by one of our Citrix consultants.  TCPing is a simple utility which expands upon the functionality provided by the "ping" command that I'm sure you're all very familiar with.

Most notably, it adds the ability to "ping" a specific port on a host to check whether or not it is open for business.  There are many situations where you could use something like this, such as making sure a service is up and running when you expect it to be.  However, my favorite use of this tool is when I'm waiting for a host to reboot and I want to RDP into it.  There have been so many times, before I had this utility, that I would let ping run until there was a response, and then I would open my RDP client and periodically try and connect until I got through.

Well, now with tcping, I can run a command like "tcping -t hostname 3389" and just sit back and wait for the port to be open, at which time I know I'm good to go.

I know this is not a major discovery, or anything new, but it's the little things that count, right?

If you would like to download this utility, you can get it from here.