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Question: I overheard someone talking about pinging a host - what does that mean?

Answer: Ping is a utility that is used to verify the existence of a host or network gateway.

Ping refers to a command which sends out an ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packet to any network addressable host. If the host is there it will echo back - verifying the existence of the host. It can be useful for determining whether a host is on the internet and running.

Ping is typically used in troubleshooting networks. By pinging different parts of the network it is possible to isolate the trouble spot/spots. In the example below, you could ping the larger connections working your way down until it is determined which host fails.

Ping can also be used to analyze speeds and percentage of dropped packets. If you are connecting to a BUSY host, it is not uncommon to get 40-50% dropped packets. Dropped packets have to be requested again and re-transmitted which contributes to a slow network.

If you get 100% packet loss - the host you pinged is a valid domain name, but a reliable connection could not be established. The host could be down, your machine could have gone off the network or possibly a router is down.

Want to ping someone? (from my server)
This will ping either an IP Address or a DNS name three times.
Please type in a valid IP Address or DNS entry?:

example IP Address 192.236.44.161
example DNS entry habanero.sss.usd.edu


this may take up to 60 seconds for a bad host

Question: Why would you want to ping from Netscape?

    Answer: The only reason I can think of is for some kind of tutorial.

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