I'm just going to point out that if the connection is especially bogged down, having that smokeping hitting it constantly can't be a good idea...
And I'm going to point out the bandwidth used by the smokeping is 0.06kb/s ... If you're -THAT- bad in terms of bandwidth, give up.
Bandwidth and pong (not a typo) are two different things.
One packet can make a colossal difference if it's placed awkwardly in the stream.
Not really. Not one bit. It's not like I'm PoDing or Smurfing them, even tho I don't think there is a single network in the internet vulnerable to that anymore.
Ping, and pong for that matter, which is an spoofed ICMP0 attack, have -everything- to do with bandwidth. ICMP packets do use your bandwidth and do use your router or cpu time (which ever responds to the ping in your network) just like any other internet protocol. Even so, to flood someone you'd have to have more bandwidth than what's available to them at the moment. A 1kb ping every 3 seconds will never ever slow you down. Even if your bandwidth is all used up, it will just show a larger ping since it will fall into packet queuing due to limited bandwidth.
Unless someone is actively flooding you with irregular pings, it will not affect you.
Back in the days I used to pong and pod people from 3 *nix boxes I had access to. I had this awesome script that DoSed people on IRC whenever they joined our room and went a/s/l, cyber, and things like that.
Edit: Actually, to be fair in this case, it will slow you down by 0.06kb/s but if that's a problem.... damn... and nope, ICMP0s have low priority, they will not jump ahead a TCP queuing, so they wont delay packets.