[CentOS] CentOS 5.x 32bit VPS Ping Issue

[Blake Hudson]

Sounds like the remote router is having to ARP to find the MAC address
of your VPS server. Perhaps its ARP cache is full or it has a relatively
short ARP cache TTL. Cisco routers, by default, have a 4 hour timeout. I
can't imagine a router having < 5 minute timeout. You could test this by
running a network capture on the VPS to see if the gateway is frequently
ARPing for your VPS IP.

Either way, I'd report the issue to your hosting provider and see if
they have an answer.

--Blake

-------- Original Message  --------
Subject: [CentOS] CentOS 5.x 32bit VPS Ping Issue
From: Matt <lm7812 at gmail.com>
To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
Date: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 8:57:42 AM
> I just got an inexpensive VPS too have an outside server to play/test
> with.  I am pinging it every 5 minutes and graphing with MRTG on
> another CentOS box.  This works fine to all servers but the VPS.  The
> first ping to the VPS is always crud and following ones are fine.
>
> [root at ns1 scripts]# ping X
> PING X 56(84) bytes of data.
> 64 bytes from X: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=773 ms
> 64 bytes from X: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=42.4 ms
> 64 bytes from X: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=42.8 ms
> 64 bytes from X: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=43.1 ms
>
> Makes my graph for that one look real bad because it looks at first
> ping only.  Thought about modifying my script to send a warm up ping
> first but I just don't think I should have to do that or is this a
> normal thing for a VPS that is pretty much idle?
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