Reading this blog post (https://thinkpowershell.com/2016/02/use-test-netconnection-replace-ping/)
recently got me thinking (not for the first time) about using more of the new
PowerShell versions of the cmd.exe commands I use so frequently.
Then and in the past the two things that stop me are 1)
after so many years, running ping is almost down to muscle memory, and 2) as
diverse and powerful as they might be, the PowerShell versions aren't exactly
known for their brevity!
My solution... spending the afternoon knocking together
some functions which I can add to my profile, which replicate the syntax and
produce similar if not better results than I normally get.
Ping
The first one's simple enough really :
function ping
{
param(
$PingAddress
)
Test-NetConnection -computername $PingAddress
}
Tracert
Trace route gets a bit more complex, not least because
simply adding -TraceRoute to the Test-NetConnection command only returns the
resulting IP addresses, but I generally want to know what they resolve to as
well. As you'll see the required command gets a bit long if you want it to
resolve the PTR records as well.
For added giggles, I also added a GeoIP lookup where the
address is an IPv4 address as that's often handy to know.
function tracert
{
param(
$TracertAddress
)
# Where the
address is an IP, do a GeoIP lookup as well
If
($TracertAddress -match
'^(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)$')
{
# GeoIP
Author: Patrick Lambert - http://dendory.net
$geoip =
New-WebServiceProxy -Uri
"http://www.webservicex.net/geoipservice.asmx?wsdl" -Namespace
WebServiceProxy
$geoip.GetGeoIP($TracertAddress)
}
# The actual
tracert part
Test-NetConnection -ComputerName $TracertAddress -TraceRoute | `
Select
-ExpandProperty TraceRoute | `
% {
Resolve-DnsName $_ -type PTR -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue }
}
Telnet
The final one is Telnet, or specifically in my case
seeing what is returned when a connection to a specified port is made. Note,
you can do this using Test-NetConnection as well, however it only returns
whether the connection is successful. If you're checking something like the
responsiveness of an SMTP server, you also want to see the banner information
returned as part of the request, which is why this script is a lot longer!
function telnet
# Based on
http://myitpath.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/simple-powershell-tcp-client-for.html
{
param(
[parameter(mandatory=$true,position=0,helpmessage="Hostname or
IP")]
[string]$hostname,
[parameter(position=1)]
$PortNum
)
if
(test-connection $hostname) {
$conn =
new-object system.net.sockets.tcpclient($hostname,$PortNum)
$str =
$conn.getstream()
$buff =
new-object system.byte[] 1024
$enc =
new-object System.Text.ASCIIEncoding
start-sleep
-m 200
$output =
""
while
($str.DataAvailable -and $output -notmatch "username") {
$read =
$str.read($buff,0,1024)
$output
+= $enc.getstring($buff, 0, $read)
start-sleep -m 300
}
$conn.close()
$output
} else {
Write-Error
"Unable to ping or resolve host"
exit 1
}
}
So by adding those three to your PowerShell $profile (see
http://www.howtogeek.com/50236/customizing-your-powershell-profile/
if you're unsure how) you can add those three old style commands to your
PowerShell every time it loads.
