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Asked: 2026-05-27T02:50:48+00:00

I would like to time how quickly the latency is of a system by

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I would like to time how quickly the latency is of a system by sending a packet with the same dest IP as the source IP. Is this relatively simple to do?

How would you custom-build the packets?

Would setting the two IP addresses achieve what I am after?

What is the best timing method?

Any tips/ideas at a low/high level would be greatly appreciated. I intend to use C/C++ on Unix with the boost libraries and libpcap.

EDIT: I should add I will be doing this on a home network, behind a router. I presume the packet will go to the router and come straight back if I were to use 192.168.2.1 (local IP of my system) for the source and dest addresses.

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  1. Editorial Team

    You can just try ping to your own IP. this will produce ICMP packets. There are libraries which also allows you to do the same from an application.

    If you want to create packets for yourself you can use socket API. Remember, you can send the source IP address and destination IP address as same, but the port number needs to be different.

    For timing you need can use gettimeofday function.

    EDIT:
    you can ping from your C++ program. See: http://verplant.org/liboping/ or check out some other forum. The reason i emphasized on ping is because it returns right back from the network stack. If you send a UDP packet on the other hand, expecting the application to return and echo, then the processing time of the packet on the listening server gets added.

    If you ping to local machine ip (or even lo) it returns without going to switch or next hop router. It will respond even if you remove your eth cable or wifi.

    What you are trying to do is implemented in NTP daemon with NTP protocol though.

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