PING is a discovery protocol that works by either multicasting PING requests to an IP multicast address or connecting to a gossip router. As such, PING normally sits on top of the UDP or TUNNEL transport protocols. Each node responds with a packet {C, A}, where C=coordinator's address and A=own address. After timeout milliseconds or num_initial_members replies, the joiner determines the coordinator from the responses, and sends a JOIN request to it (handled by). If nobody responds, we assume we are the first member of a group.

Here is an example PING configuration for IP multicast.

<PING timeout="2000"
    num_initial_members="2"
    down_thread="false" up_thread="false"/>
                

Here is another example PING configuration for contacting a Gossip Router.

	
<PING gossip_host="localhost"
      gossip_port="1234"
	      timeout="3000" 
	      num_initial_members="3"
	      down_thread="false" up_thread="false"/>

The available attributes in the PING element are listed below.

If both gossip_host and gossip_port are defined, the cluster uses the GossipRouter for the initial discovery. If the initial_hosts is specified, the cluster pings that static list of addresses for discovery. Otherwise, the cluster uses IP multicasting for discovery.