ping -- Command to check if a node is up.

SYNOPSIS

ping id [len] [pongbytes]

DESCRIPTION

The ping command checks if the node with id is ready to talk. It currently only works for peers we have a channel with.

• id (pubkey): The pubkey of the node to ping.
• len (u16, optional): The length of the ping. The default is 128.
• pongbytes (u16, optional): The length of the reply. A value of 65532 to 65535 means don't reply. The default is 128.

RETURN VALUE

On success, an object is returned, containing:

• totlen (u16): The answer length of the reply message (including header: 0 means no reply expected).

ERRORS

On failure, one of the following error codes may be returned:

• -32602: Error in given parameters or we're already waiting for a ping response from peer.

AUTHOR

Vincenzo Palazzo <[email protected]> wrote the initial version of this man page,
but many others did the hard work of actually implementing this rpc command.

SEE ALSO

lightning-connect(7)

RESOURCES

Main web site: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning

EXAMPLES

Example 1:

Request:

lightning-cli ping -k "id"="nodeid010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101" "len"=128 "pongbytes"=128

{
  "id": "example:ping#1",
  "method": "ping",
  "params": {
    "id": "nodeid010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101",
    "len": 128,
    "pongbytes": 128
  }
}

Response:

{
  "totlen": 132
}

Example 2:

Request:

lightning-cli ping -k "id"="nodeid030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303" "len"=1000 "pongbytes"=65535

{
  "id": "example:ping#2",
  "method": "ping",
  "params": {
    "id": "nodeid030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303",
    "len": 1000,
    "pongbytes": 65535
  }
}

Response:

{
  "totlen": 0
}