I'm trying to ping from a specific interface, I have a wired and a wireless connection both going into my laptop.
My wired adaptor eth0 is on the IP 172.16.109.75
My wifi adaptor wlan0 is on the IP 192.168.1.69
When I ping google with my eth0 unplugged with the following command:
conneco@mcr-pc-29334:~$ ping -I wlan0 www.google.co.uk
PING www.l.google.com (74.125.230.115) from 192.168.1.69 wlan0: 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 74.125.230.115: icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=32.7 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.230.115: icmp_seq=2 ttl=52 time=28.7 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.230.115: icmp_seq=3 ttl=52 time=28.9 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.230.115: icmp_seq=4 ttl=52 time=28.3 ms
It works fine as expected. I plug my eth0 cable in and run the same again:
conneco@mcr-pc-29334:~$ ping -I wlan0 www.google.co.uk
PING www.l.google.com (74.125.230.112) from 172.16.109.75 wlan0: 56(84) bytes of data.
From mcr-pc-29334.local (192.168.1.69) icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
From mcr-pc-29334.local (192.168.1.69) icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable
From mcr-pc-29334.local (192.168.1.69) icmp_seq=4 Destination Host Unreachable
From mcr-pc-29334.local (192.168.1.69) icmp_seq=5 Destination Host Unreachable
From mcr-pc-29334.local (192.168.1.69) icmp_seq=6 Destination Host Unreachable
From mcr-pc-29334.local (192.168.1.69) icmp_seq=7 Destination Host Unreachable
By the output at the top it seems to send it from the eth0 (which at work won't be able to ping because it gets blocked), but the wifi is another link to a separate network where I'm on the net directly and therefore sending the ping request from the wlan0 should work. What's happening? How should I fix it?
Best Answer
Probably, when pluging in the ethernet cable, your default route gateway changes by dhcp. You send packets from wlan0 but your system doesn't know who is the gateway to forward them to. This way you can only ping systems within 192.168.1 network but not further. If you want to get a reply from the google server, you'll have to either change the default gateway back to the wireless router, or add a specific route for this server.