Switch Constantly Pings 8.8.8.8

[ph0t0g]

I was running a packet capture on a MS220-8p's uplink port and discovered that the switches IP was constantly pinging the google dns server 8.8.8.8. I can see no reason for this. Any ideas?

17:08:05.873574 IP 172.16.1.202 > 8.8.8.8: ICMP echo request, id 38582, seq 8257, length 64
17:08:05.885341 IP 8.8.8.8 > 172.16.1.202: ICMP echo reply, id 38582, seq 8257, length 64
17:08:06.873886 IP 172.16.1.202 > 8.8.8.8: ICMP echo request, id 38582, seq 8258, length 64
17:08:06.884531 IP 8.8.8.8 > 172.16.1.202: ICMP echo reply, id 38582, seq 8258, length 64
17:08:07.874352 IP 172.16.1.202 > 8.8.8.8: ICMP echo request, id 38582, seq 8259, length 64
17:08:07.885525 IP 8.8.8.8 > 172.16.1.202: ICMP echo reply, id 38582, seq 8259, length 64
17:08:08.874992 IP 172.16.1.202 > 8.8.8.8: ICMP echo request, id 38582, seq 8260, length 64
17:08:08.886283 IP 8.8.8.8 > 172.16.1.202: ICMP echo reply, id 38582, seq 8260, length 64
17:08:09.875136 IP 172.16.1.202 > 8.8.8.8: ICMP echo request, id 38582, seq 8261, length 64
17:08:09.886267 IP 8.8.8.8 > 172.16.1.202: ICMP echo reply, id 38582, seq 8261, length 64
17:08:10.875321 IP 172.16.1.202 > 8.8.8.8: ICMP echo request, id 38582, seq 8262, length 64
17:08:10.886453 IP 8.8.8.8 > 172.16.1.202: ICMP echo reply, id 38582, seq 8262, length 64

[BrandonS]

I am pretty sure that is just part of the normal connectivity testing al Meraki products do.

This is for MX, but probably similar for MS, etc. https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Firewall_and_Traffic_Shaping/Connection_Monitoring_for_WAN_Failo...

[jdsilva · Accepted solution]

Yup, @BrandonS has it right. It's part of the connectivity check that all Meraki products do. You cannot turn it off. 

[ph0t0g]

Oh, OK. So it's just E.T. phoning home. Thx

[BrandonS]

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@ph0t0g wrote:

Oh, OK. So it's just E.T. phoning home. Thx

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Haha.  Does anyone here remember ROLM?  I used to have a bumper sticker back in the 80's that said, "E.T. phone ROLM"

[Lemy]

I used to work at a nuclear power plant that migrated from ROLM to Cisco VOIP. Funny bumper sticker but probably doesn't translate to 2018 very well. 🙂

[FelixWong]

Today I experienced slow internet connection at one of my managed sites.

Then I found that there was a large amount of pings being sent from my switch.  

The ping size to Google DNS went up to 70MB at its peak!  

I restarted the switch but the ping would start to accumulate again.  From 84B it is slowly accumulating till it reaches its peak.  

I have been trying to get on the phone with Meraki Tech Support but no one is answering.

[ph0t0g]

Do you mean 70Mb/sec? If so, that is a different issue then I experienced. My "background" data usage is around 0.5Kb/sec.