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I'm new to managing EC2 instances. I have created one, and I can run it and remotely login with Windows Remote Desktop. I can ping external servers from inside my instance, but I cannot ping the instance from my machine using its DNS public name. I guess I'm doing something wrong with security groups. Any thoughts anybody?

Paul Gregoire
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Paweł Głowacki
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2 Answers2

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To ping an EC2 instance, you need to allow ICMP traffic in the instance's security group.

Matthew
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ktheory
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As far as I am aware, Amazon is blocking ICMP (ping) requests. If you want to perform some sort of "is it up" request you may want to implement some other routine like a web based "ping" page; just have it display the time when you hit it.

Paul Gregoire
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    This isn't currently the case - you just need to allow ICMP inbound traffic as indicated above. NOTE: It took about 10-20 minutes for my changes to go through... – rholmes Apr 17 '14 at 01:35
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    Yes, as with many things in life this changed; it is now an option in your security group. My answer was only valid for a few years. – Paul Gregoire Apr 17 '14 at 14:27
  • Thanks for responding. Since I wasn't looking at AWS when this was posted, I had no experience of the "way it was" so I can only speak of the current situation. I was concerned that my statement might be taken as a criticism of the original post; there is no such intent - these things sometimes change almost daily ;-) – rholmes Apr 18 '14 at 16:09
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    As @rholmes said, this takes a while to go through. I thought I was doing something wrong and gave up until I saw this. Thanks! It should probably be part of one of the answers instead of being hidden here in comments. – stepanian May 15 '15 at 19:17
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    Down-votes 6+ years later, what a jerk you are, whoever you are.. Much Karma to you pal – Paul Gregoire Apr 27 '17 at 04:28