Testing Network Named Pipes

Two utilities included with SQL Server are designed to help test network named pipes. The makepipe and readpipe utilities are installed during installation of both the client and server components. There are different versions of these utilities for the different operating systems they run on ¾ makepipe runs on Windows NT; readpipe runs on Windows NT, Windows, and MS-DOS. Be sure to use the correct version for the operating system that you are testing. (The version that runs on Windows is named readpipw. If the SQL Server tools have been installed, readpipw is located in the \SQL60\BIN directory. No icon is created for it.)

To test the integrity of the network named pipe services

At the operating-system prompt on the server computer, type:
makepipe
The makepipe utility returns the following information:
```
Making PIPE:\pipe\abc
read to write delay (seconds):0
Waiting for Client to Connect...
```
SQL Server is waiting for a client to connect.
At the operating-system prompt on the client workstation, type:
readpipe /Sservername /Dstring
where

server name

Is the network server name of the SQL Server on which makepipe was started.

string

Is a test character string. If the string contains spaces, it must be enclosed in quotation marks. Note that there are no spaces between /S and the server name, and no spaces between /D and the string.

For example, to connect to a SQL Server named MYSERVER, type either of the following:
```
readpipe /Smyserver /Dhello
readpipe /Smyserver /D'hello there'
```
If a network named pipe connection can be established, the workstation returns the following information:
```
SvrName:\\myserver
PIPE   :\\myserver\pipe\abc
DATA   :hello 
Data Sent: 1 : hello
Data Read: 1 : hello
```
If a network named pipe connection can be established, the makepipe utility returns information similar to this:
```
Waiting for client to send... 1
Data Read:      hello
Waiting for client to send... 2
Pipe closed
Waiting for Client to Connect...
```
At this point, SQL Server is waiting for another client to connect. The readpipe utility can be run from other workstations.
When testing is complete, go to the computer where the makepipe utility is running, and press CTRL+BREAK or CTRL+C.

If the results are different from those shown in step 2, network named pipe services are not available. If you are using named pipes as the IPC mechanism, clients cannot connect to SQL Server until named pipes are available. These utilities merely attempt to open and use a named pipe. They do not stress the named pipe connection.