I was curious to see how long it would take to load “index.html” from my web server, so I created http-ping.pl to measure the time it took to retrieve a webpage from my web server:
$ http-ping.pl -s prefetch.net -p 80 -d 2
Querying HTTP server prefetch.net:80 every 2 seconds (Ctrl-C to stop):
Mon Nov 29 18:00:21 2004: TCP Connection Time=0.034s HTTP GET Time=0.052s [Normal Delay]
Mon Nov 29 18:00:23 2004: TCP Connection Time=0.035s HTTP GET Time=0.052s [Normal Delay]
Mon Nov 29 18:00:25 2004: TCP Connection Time=0.035s HTTP GET Time=0.055s [Normal Delay]
Mon Nov 29 18:00:27 2004: TCP Connection Time=0.035s HTTP GET Time=0.053s [Normal Delay]
Mon Nov 29 18:00:30 2004: TCP Connection Time=0.035s HTTP GET Time=0.051s [Normal Delay]
This will display the time it takes to perform the TCP three way handshake ( Syn, Syn/Ack, Ack), and GET the index page from a web server. This was a quick and dirty hack, and a full rewrite in C (w/ SSL support and timings!) is forthcoming. If you are interested in using http-ping.pl, you can grab the code from prefetch.net.