# Ping definition
[ping]
  # Name of the related entry point
  #
  # Optional
  # Default: "traefik"
  #
  entryPoint = "traefik"

!!! warning Even if you have authentication configured on entry point, the /ping path of the api is excluded from authentication.

The /ping health-check URL is enabled with the command-line --ping or config file option [ping]. Thus, if you have a regular path for /foo and an entrypoint on :80, you would access them as follows:

• Regular path: http://hostname:80/foo
• Dashboard: http://hostname:8080/
• Ping URL: http://hostname:8080/ping

However, for security reasons, you may want to be able to expose the /ping health-check URL to outside health-checkers, e.g. an Internet service or cloud load-balancer, without exposing your dashboard's port. In many environments, the security staff may not allow you to expose it.

You have two options:

• Enable /ping on a regular entry point
• Enable /ping on a dedicated port

To proxy /ping from a regular entry point to the administration one without exposing the dashboard, do the following:

defaultEntryPoints = ["http"]

[entryPoints]
  [entryPoints.http]
  address = ":80"

[ping]
entryPoint = "http"

The above link ping on the http entry point and then expose it on port 80

If you do not want to or cannot expose the health-check on a regular entry point - e.g. your security rules do not allow it, or you have a conflicting path - then you can enable health-check on its own entry point. Use the following configuration:

defaultEntryPoints = ["http"]

[entryPoints]
  [entryPoints.http]
  address = ":80"
  [entryPoints.ping]
  address = ":8082"

[ping]
entryPoint = "ping"

The above is similar to the previous example, but instead of enabling /ping on the default entry point, we enable it on a dedicated entry point.

In the above example, you would access a regular path and health-check as follows:

• Regular path: http://hostname:80/foo
• Ping URL: http://hostname:8082/ping

Note the dedicated port :8082 for /ping.

In the above example, it is very important to create a named dedicated entry point, and do not include it in defaultEntryPoints. Otherwise, you are likely to expose all services via this entry point.

If you are running traefik behind a external Load-balancer, and want to configure rotation health check on the Load-balancer to take a traefik instance out of rotation gracefully, you can configure lifecycle.requestAcceptGraceTimeout and the ping endpoint will return 503 response on traefik server termination, so that the Load-balancer can take the terminating traefik instance out of rotation, before it stops responding.