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I have thousands of devices and all of them need to have some kind of communication pass through them every couple of seconds to stay active. Pinging is sufficient for keeping the devices active. Are there any public servers that are available for devices to freely ping without the risk of facing legal ramifications?

Guest13531
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    How about your own? – Michael Hampton Jul 16 '14 at 20:39
  • I get your point, but this isn't an option. – Guest13531 Jul 16 '14 at 20:54
  • "Theft of service is defined by state laws, which vary by state, but typically define the crime as knowingly securing the performance of a service by deception or threat, diverting another's services to the actor's own benefit" - http://definitions.uslegal.com/t/theft-of-services/ Even if you don't get legal ramifications from it, you are asking us for help with choosing a server to seal services from; services they didn't intend to provide, for your own gain. I would like to see any answer where a big provider expressly gives permission to ping their service for any use except DOS, though. – TessellatingHeckler Jul 16 '14 at 20:54
  • Do they have to get a reply? Have them ping a non-existant address, they will still send traffic. How about have them ping their local gateway IP whatever it is? How about have them ping themselves, keeping the traffic internal? Ping each other in a mesh fashion? – TessellatingHeckler Jul 16 '14 at 20:55
  • This reminds me of when Netgear, due to their ignorance, set off a [DDOS on a UW Madison NTP Server](http://news.techworld.com/security/409/netgear-sets-off-denial-of-service-attack/). They used another organization's server without permission and ended up causing a lot of problems because of it. They *should have* stood up their own NTP infrastructure and used that. – EEAA Jul 16 '14 at 20:56
  • @TessellatingHeckler That's what I'm looking for. I wasn't sure if maybe Google, for example, had a dedicated server for people to ping as they like. I'm not talking about stealing services or trying to take a server down. Edit: They need a reply to determine if there is network connectivity. They won't be on the same network. – Guest13531 Jul 16 '14 at 20:57
  • @Guest13531 - that's the rub, though. You **are** stealing services. Yes, nearly every server out there will respond to pings, but that's not why they exist. You cannot in good conscience use some other organization's systems in a manner which they're not designed to operate, for your own benefit. – EEAA Jul 16 '14 at 20:58
  • @Guest13531 Oh I beg your pardon, I completely read then ignored the question "that it is legal to ping" and went straight for "without the risk of facing legal ramifications" as if you meant "dodgy but I can get away with it". Yes, fair question! – TessellatingHeckler Jul 16 '14 at 20:59
  • @EEAA I'm asking about a server that was created for the sole purpose of people being able to ping it as they like. That's not stealing services because the server would be used as it was intended to be. – Guest13531 Jul 16 '14 at 21:01
  • @Guest13531 - still, use your own server for this. Reasons are below. – EEAA Jul 16 '14 at 21:01
  • I guess I don't understand why you don't just have each device ping it's respective default gateway address. You could even have them ping their respective network broadcast address, some device on the same network will respond. – joeqwerty Jul 16 '14 at 22:47
  • How about the devices default gateway. In most cases that should always reply to ICMP. – Linuxx Jul 16 '14 at 21:48
  • The OP had nothing to do with some type of DDOS. He only wanted a "lighthouse" for network testing. The downvotes were unfair. Shame. – peterh Aug 14 '14 at 11:07

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I wouldn't be so concerned about legal ramifications here as I would about the server just going away.

Use your own server for this, and if at all possible, make sure the devices are pinging a DNS name, not an IP directly. This way, you can easily change the IP without having to go and modify each and every device out there.

All things considered, pings (in their default configuration) do not consume much bandwidth, and even with thousands of devices pinging, a tiny VPS would suffice.

EEAA
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