arping – Backtrack 5 – Information Gathering – Network Analysis – Identify Live Hosts – arping
The arping application is a simple command that will allow you to ping devices by hostname, IP address, or MAC address. The unfortunate part is that most device will not respond to the arp requests, which are directed broadcast ICMP echo requests, though there are some out there that do. I go into more detail below regarding pinging via MAC address by providing an example of the typical output, example output when a MAC address responds to the ICMP echo requests, and details about how to configure hosts to respond to these ICMP echo requests. I also show a couple of the switches available with arping and provide examples of using arping to ping devices by IP and host.