PowerShell: Export Ping Results to CSV

Question

I have a PowerShell loop that does effectively what I want it to. The problem is that the output is very messy. I work for an ISP and one of the most effective ways we have to diagnose network issues is via multiple pings.

The problem is that setting up multiple pings can be messy. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, I'm seeking to create a simple PowerShell script that will provide an easy to digest output based on a list of IP addresses.

Here is the code I currently have:

# Define a list of IP addresses and hostnames to ping
$targets = Get-Content -Path C:\Users\Chad\Desktop\IPs.txt

# Loop through each target and ping it
 while (1) {
    foreach ($target in $targets) {
        ping $target -n 1

    }
}

I won't say my code is particularly elegant or groundbreaking. All I need to know is if there is a way to export the results for the pings to a .csv where each column represents one IP address, and the rows represent the latency for each particular ping.

The idea is that I can train my peers on how to use this script and that the .csv will not be opened until the pings are manually stopped. I'm fully open to completely reformulating how I am approaching this problem as well.

Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

Try using powershell's Test-Connection instead, which outputs handy objects:

$targets = Get-Content -Path C:\Users\Chad\Desktop\IPs.txt

# Loop through each target and ping it
# I use -AsJob to force failed pings to get included in results
$job = Test-Connection -ComputerName $targets -Count 1 -AsJob
$results = $job | Wait-Job | Receive-Job

$results | Export-CSV c:\folder\results.csv

Looks like

Source    Destination   IPV4Address   IPV6Address Bytes Time(ms)
------    -----------   -----------   ----------- ----- --------
MyDevice  bogus                                   32            
MyDevice  myServer1     10.0.0.2                  32    65      
MyDevice  MyServer2     10.0.0.3                  32    68      

Answer 2

To begin with you'll use the PowerShell native command [Test-Connection][1]. This is the PS version of the legacy ping.exe, and it is native PS and so has all the cool object features and output capabilities.

The simplest one-liner for this is:

test-connection hostname | Export-Csv path\to\csv.csv

This will run the pings against the host and record the results into the csv file specified.

You could convert your script by taking the ping line and modifying it like this:

Test-Connection $target -Count 1 | Export-CSV "c:\results\$target.csv"

This will run one ping against each target specified and record the results in its own csv file named for the target.

You can also set up an array (a variable that is a list of values) and capture each result in there and then drop it to a single output file.

Answer 3

It is possible to use the ping command with PowerShell to parse and format the output into a CSV file.

Every row in the CSV will represent a target, containing two columns denoting the target's name and its associated latency in milliseconds. If no response is received, the latency column will display 100% loss.

First, it'll store the ping result in a variable and apply a match operator to identify key lines (i.e. "Reply from|100% Loss"). Then, it uses split, replace, and trim logic within conditional if statements to parse and process the relevant data into the CSV out-file.

Rather than introducing additional complexity with pscustomobject in order to use export-csv, this approach maintains simplicity by using just three lines of code while retaining your existing matching logic.

PowerShell

# Define a list of IP addresses and hostnames to ping
$targets = Get-Content -Path C:\Users\Chad\Desktop\IPs.txt
$csvFile = "C:\Users\Chad\Desktop\IPs.csv"

# Loop through each target and ping it
 while (1) {
    foreach ($target in $targets) {
        $p = (ping $target -n 1) -match "Reply from|100% Loss"
        If($p -match "Reply from"){"$target,$($p.split('=')[2].replace('TTL','').Trim())" | Out-File "$csvFile" -Append}
        If($p -match "100% Loss"){"$target,100% loss" | Out-File "$csvFile" -Append} 
    } 
}

Output Example

8.8.8.8,11ms
12.34.56.78,100% loss
whoisyourmomma.com,28ms
www.cia.gov,3ms