ping:

A network consists of several computers connected together. The network can be as simple as a few computers connected in your home or office, or as complicated as a large university network or even the entire Internet. When your computer is part of a network, you have access to those systems either directly or through services like mail and the web. There are a variety of networking programs that you can use. Some are handy for performing diagnostics to see if everything is working properly. Others (like mail readers and web browsers) are useful for getting your work done and staying in contact with other people.

13.1 ping
ping(8)

sends an ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packet to the specified host. If the host responds, you get an ICMP packet back. Sound strange? Well, you can ping an IP address to see if a machine is alive. If there is no response, you know something is wrong. Here is an example conversation between two Linux users: User A: Loki's down again. User B: Are you sure? User A: Yeah, I tried pinging it, but there's no response. It's instances like these that make ping a very useful day-to-day command. It provides a very quick way to see if a machine is up and connected to the network. The basic syntax is:
% ping www.slackware.com

There are, of course, several options that can be specified. Check the ping(1) man page for more information. Helps in determining TCP/IP Networks IP address as well as determine issues with the network and assists in resolving them. See the ping definition for a full description. Availability The ping.exe command is an external command that is available in the below Microsoft operating systems. Windows 95 Windows 98

Windows Windows Windows Windows Windows Windows Syntax

ping

ME NT 2000 XP Vista 7

[-t] [-a] [-n count] [-l size] [-f] [-i TTL] [-v TOS] [-r count] [-s count] [[-j host-list] | [-k host-list]] [-w timeout] destination-list

Options: -t

Pings the specified host until stopped. To see statistics and continue - type C To stop - press Ctrl + C. Resolve addresses to hostnames. Number of echo requests to send. Send buffer size. Set Don't Fragment flag in packet. Time To Live. Type Of Service. Record route for count hops. Timestamp for count hops. Loose source route along host-list. Strict source route along host-list.

-a -n count -l size -f -i TTL -v TOS -r count -s count -j host-list -k host-list -w timeout

Timeout in milliseconds to wait for ea

Examples ping localhost Pings the local host, this will allow you to see if the computer is able to send information out and receive the information back. Note that this does not send information over a network but may allow you to see if the card is being seen. ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Allows you to ping another computer where the x's are located are where you would place the IP address of the computer you are attempting to ping. If this is not able to complete, this should relay back an unsuccessful message, which could be an indication of cable issues, network card issues, hub issue, etc. ping computerhope.com PING computerhope.com (204.228.150.3) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from www.computerhope.com (204.228.150.3): icmp_seq=1 ttl=63 time=0.267 ms --- computerhope.com ping statistics --1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.267/0.267/0.267/0.000 ms Additional information Is there a continuous ping options? ping <address> -t Use the -t option to ping any address until you cancel it by pressing Ctrl + C.

Ping

1. Short for Packet InterNet Groper, ping is a utility used to verify if a networkdata packet is capable of being distributed to an address without errors. The ping utility is commonly used to check for network errors.

In the image to the right, is an example of what happens when a ping is sent. As can be seen, the user would first start by using the ping command to ping theIP address 204.228.150.3. Next the request is sent over the network hub androuter in this basic example to the other computer with this IP address. Once successfully received the computer replies to the ping with a pong response and once received, the time between when sent and when received is calculated to generate an average response or latency time. If the ping does not reach its destination, it is either due to a network configuration error or because it is being blocked the sending computer encounters a request timed out error. 2. In computer gaming, a ping, also known as a high ping or low ping, is a measurement of how fast the connection to the game server the player has. For example, a player with a low 50 ping is going to have a better game experience than a player with a high 250 ping. To help with server response times some game servers may only accept users who have a low ping.
To "ping" a computer or to ping an IP address simply means to query that IP address to see if there is a response. If a response returns via the ping, the IP address on the pinged computer is live. A user may employ the ping function when troubleshooting a website, email application or network connection. For example, a webmaster may publish a new website on a certain IP address. He checks the IP address in a browser but receives a "404" error--a "page not found" error. The first thing the webmaster may do is to ping the IP address to see if it is receiving web traffic. If the ping comes back with a response, then he knows the IP address is OK and the problem most likely is due to issues in the page code or on the web server. Read more: How to Check a Ping From a Computer | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_5068452_check-ping-computer.html#ixzz1iK4ZRi2E

**********What is the Ping Command?: The ping command is a Command Prompt command used to test the ability of the source computer to reach a specified destination computer. The ping command is usually used as a simple way verify that a computer can communicate over the network with another computer or network device. The ping command operates by sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Echo Request messages to the destination computer and waiting for a response. How many of those responses are returned, and how long it takes for

them to return, are the two major pieces of information that the ping command provides. Ping Command Syntax: ping [-t] [-a] [-n count] [-l size] [-f] [-i TTL] [-vTOS] [-r count] [-s count] [w timeout] [-R] [-Ssrcaddr] [-4] [-6] target [/?] Tip: See How To Read Command Syntax if you're not sure how to interpret the ping commandsyntax above. -t = Using this option will ping the target until you force it to stop using Ctrl-C. -a = This ping command option will resolve, if possible, the hostname of an IP address target. -n count = This option sets the number of ICMP Echo Request messages to send. If you execute the ping command without this option, four requests will be sent. -l size = Use this option to set the size, in bytes, of the echo request packet from 32 to 65,527. The ping command will send a 32 byte echo request if you don't use the -l option. -f = Use this ping command option to prevent ICMP Echo Requests from being fragmented by routers between you and the target. The -f option is most often used to troubleshoot Path Maximum Transmission Unit (PMTU) issues. -i TTL = This option sets the Time to Live (TTL) value, the maximum of which is 255. -v TOS = This option allows you to set a Type of Service (TOS) value. Beginning in Windows 7, this option no longer functions but still exists for compatibility reasons. -r count = Use this ping command option to specify the number of hops between the your computer and the target computer or device that you'd like to be recorded and displayed. The maximum value for count is 9 so use the tracert command instead if you're interested in viewing all hops between two devices. -s count = Use this option to report the time, in Internet Timestamp format, that each echo request is received and echo reply is sent. The maximum value for count is 4 meaning that only the first four hops can be time stamped.

-w timeout = Specifying a timeout value when executing the ping command adjusts the amount of time, in milliseconds, that ping waits for each reply. If you don't use the -w option, the default timeout value is used which is 4000, or 4 seconds. -R = This option tells the ping command to trace the round trip path. -S srcaddr = Use this option to specify the source address. -4 = This forces the ping command to use IPv4 only but is only necessary if target is a hostname and not an IP address. -6 = This forces the ping command to use IPv6 only but as with the -4 option, is only necessary when pinging a hostname. target = This is the destination you wish to ping, either an IP address or a hostname. [/?] = Use the help switch with the ping command to show detailed help about the command's several options. Note: The -f, -v, -r, -s, -j, and -k options work when pinging IPv4 addresses only. The -Rand -S options only work with IPv6. Other less commonly used switches for the ping command exist including [j host-list] and [-k host-list]. Execute ping /? from the Command Prompt for more information on these two options. Tip: Save all that ping command output to a file using a redirection operator. See How To Redirect Command Output to a File for instructions or see my Command Prompt Tricks list for more tips. Ping Command Examples: ping -n 5 -l 1500 www.google.com In this example, the ping command is used to ping the hostname www.google.com. The -noption tells the ping command to send 5 ICMP Echo Requests instead of the default of 4 and the -l option sets the packet size for each request to 1500 bytes instead of the default of 32 bytes. The result displayed in the Command Prompt window will look something like this:

Pinging www.google.com [74.125.224.82] with 1500 bytes of data: Reply from 74.125.224.82: bytes=1500 time=68ms TTL=52 Reply from 74.125.224.82: bytes=1500 time=68ms TTL=52 Reply from 74.125.224.82: bytes=1500 time=65ms TTL=52 Reply from 74.125.224.82: bytes=1500 time=66ms TTL=52 Reply from 74.125.224.82: bytes=1500 time=70ms TTL=52 Ping statistics for 74.125.224.82: Packets: Sent = 5, Received = 5, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 65ms, Maximum = 70ms, Average = 67ms The 0% loss reported under Ping statistics for 74.125.224.82 tells me that each ICMP Echo Request message sent to www.google.com was returned. This means that, as far as my network connection goes, I can communicate with Google's website just fine. ping 127.0.0.1 In the above example, I'm pinging 127.0.0.1, also called the IPv4 localhost IP address or IPv4 loopback IP address, without options. Using the ping command to ping 127.0.0.1 is an excellent way to test that Windows' network features are working properly but it says nothing about your own network hardware or your connection to any other computer or device. The IPv6 version of this test would be ping ::1. ping -a 192.168.1.22 In this example I'm asking the ping command to find the hostname assigned to the192.168.1.22 IP address but otherwise ping it as normal. Pinging J3RTY22 [192.168.1.22] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 192.168.1.22: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.22: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.22: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.22: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 Ping statistics for 192.168.1.22: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 1ms, Average = 0ms

As you can see, the ping command resolved the IP address I entered, 192.168.1.22, as the hostname J3RTY22 and then executed the remainder of the ping with default settings. ping -t -6 SERVER In this example, I force the ping command to use IPv6 with the -6 option and continue to ping SERVER indefinitely with the -t option. Pinging SERVER [fe80::fd1a:3327:2937:7df3%10] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from fe80::fd1a:3327:2937:7df3%10: time=1ms Reply from fe80::fd1a:3327:2937:7df3%10: time<1ms Reply from fe80::fd1a:3327:2937:7df3%10: time<1ms Reply from fe80::fd1a:3327:2937:7df3%10: time<1ms Reply from fe80::fd1a:3327:2937:7df3%10: time<1ms Reply from fe80::fd1a:3327:2937:7df3%10: time<1ms Reply from fe80::fd1a:3327:2937:7df3%10: time<1ms Ping statistics for fe80::fd1a:3327:2937:7df3%10: Packets: Sent = 7, Received = 7, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 1ms, Average = 0ms Control-C ^C I interrupted the ping manually with Ctrl-C after seven replies. Also, as you can see, the -6option produced IPv6 addresses. Tip: The number after the % in the replies generated in this ping command example is the IPv6 Zone ID, which most often indicates the network interface used. You can generate a table of Zone IDs matched with your network interface names by executing netsh interface ipv6 show interface. The IPv6 Zone ID is the the number in the Idx column. Ping Command Availability: The ping command is available from within the Command Prompt in Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP operating systems. The ping command is also available in older versions of Windows like Windows 98 and 95.

Note: The availability of certain ping command switches and other ping command syntax may differ from operating system to operating system. Ping Related Commands: The ping command is often used with other networking related Command Prompt commands like tracert, ipconfig, netstat, nslookup, and others.************
NAME
ping, ping6 - send ICMP ECHO_REQUEST to network hosts EXAMPLES

SYNOPSIS
ping [ -LRUbdfnqrvVaAB] [ -c count] [ -i interval] [ -l preload] [ -p pattern] [ -s packetsize] [-t ttl] [ -w deadline] [ F flowlabel] [ -I interface] [ -M hint] [ -Q tos] [ -S sndbuf] [ -Ttimestamp option] [ -W timeout] [ hop ...] destination

DESCRIPTION
ping uses the ICMP protocol's mandatory ECHO_REQUEST datagram to elicit an ICMP ECHO_RESPONSE from a host or gateway. ECHO_REQUEST datagrams (``pings'') have an IP and ICMP header, followed by a struct timeval and then an arbitrary number of ``pad'' bytes used to fill out the packet.

OPTIONS
-a Audible ping. -A Adaptive ping. Interpacket interval adapts to round-trip time, so that effectively not more than one (or more, if preload is set) unanswered probes present in the network. Minimal interval is 200msec for not super-user. On networks with low rtt this mode is essentially equivalent to flood mode. Ads Ping Blog FreePing your blog, site or RSS Feed for Free! Gain traffic and exposurewww.blogpingtool.com VisualRoute reverse traceReverse traceroute tool, IP address tracing, IP address location & morewww.visualroute.com Data Entry Jobs.Find top Data Entry Jobs Now. Submit Your Resume Free.MonsterIndia.com -b Allow pinging a broadcast address. -B Do not allow ping to change source address of probes. The address is bound to one selected when ping starts. -c count

Stop after sending count ECHO_REQUEST packets. With deadline option, ping waits forcount ECHO_REPLY packets, until the timeout expires. -d Set the SO_DEBUG option on the socket being used. Essentially, this socket option is not used by Linux kernel. -F flow label Allocate and set 20 bit flow label on echo request packets. (Only ping6). If value is zero, kernel allocates random flow label. -f Flood ping. For every ECHO_REQUEST sent a period ``.'' is printed, while for ever ECHO_REPLY received a backspace is printed. This provides a rapid display of how many packets are being dropped. If interval is not given, it sets interval to zero and outputs packets as fast as they come back or one hundred times per second, whichever is more. Only the super-user may use this option with zero interval. -i interval Wait interval seconds between sending each packet. The default is to wait for one second between each packet normally, or not to wait in flood mode. Only super-user may set interval to values less 0.2 seconds. -I interface address Set source address to specified interface address. Argument may be numeric IP address or name of device. When pinging IPv6 link-local address this option is required. -l preload If preload is specified, ping sends that many packets not waiting for reply. Only the super-user may select preload more than 3. -L Suppress loopback of multicast packets. This flag only applies if the ping destination is a multicast address. -n Numeric output only. No attempt will be made to lookup symbolic names for host addresses. p p a t t e r n You may specify up to 16 ``pad'' bytes to fill out the packet you send. This is useful for diagnosing datadependent problems in a network. For example, -p ff will cause the sent packet to be filled with all ones. Q

t o s Set Quality of Service -related bits in ICMP datagrams. tos can be either decimal or hex number. Traditionally (RFC1349), these have been interpreted as: 0 for reserved (currently being redefined as congestion control), 1-4 for Type of Service and 5-7 for Precedence. Possible settings for Type of Service are: minimal cost: 0x02, reliability: 0x04, throughput: 0x08, low delay: 0x10. Multiple TOS bits should not be set simultaneously. Possible settings for special Precedence range from priority (0x20) to net control (0xe0). You must be root (CAP_NET_ADMIN capability) to use Critical or higher precedence value. You cannot set bit 0x01 (reserved) unless ECN has been enabled in the kernel. In RFC2474, these fields has been redefined as 8-bit Differentiated Services (DS), consisting of: bits 0-1 of separate data (ECN will be used, here), and bits 2-7 of Differentiated Services Codepoint (DSCP). q Quiet output. Nothing is displayed except the summary lines at startup time and when finished.

Record route. Includes the RECORD_ROUTE option in the ECHO_REQUEST packet and displays the route buffer on returned packets. Note that the IP header is only large enough for nine such routes. Many hosts ignore or discard this option.

Bypass the normal routing tables and send directly to a host on an attached interface. If the host is not on a directly-attached network, an error is returned. This option can be used to ping a local host through an interface that has no route through it provided the option -I is also used.

Specifies the number of data bytes to be sent. The default is 56, which translates into 64 ICMP data bytes when combined with the 8 bytes of ICMP header data.

Set socket sndbuf. If not specified, it is selected to buffer not more than one packet.

Set the IP Time to Live.

Set special IP timestamp options. timestamp option may be either tsonly (only timestamps), tsandaddr (timestamps and addresses) or tsprespec host1 [host2 [host3 [host4]]] (timestamp prespecified hops).

Select Path MTU Discovery strategy. hint may be either do (prohibit fragmentation, even local one), want (do PMTU discovery, fragment locally when packet size is large), or dont (do not set DF flag).

Print full user-to-user latency (the old behaviour). Normally ping prints network round trip time, which can be different f.e. due to DNS failures.

Verbose output.

Show version and exit.

Specify a timeout, in seconds, before ping exits regardless of how many packets have been sent or received. In this case ping does not stop after count packet are sent, it waits either for deadline expire or until count probes are answered or for some error notification from network.

Time to wait for a response, in seconds. The option affects only timeout in absense of any responses, otherwise ping waits for two RTTs. When using ping for fault isolation, it should first be run on the local host, to verify that the local network interface is up and running. Then, hosts and gateways further and further away should be ``pinged''. Round-trip times and packet loss statistics are computed. If duplicate packets are received, they are not included in the packet loss calculation, although the round trip time of these packets is used in calculating the minimum/average/maximum round-trip time numbers. When the specified number of packets have been sent (and received) or if the program is terminated with a SIGINT, a brief summary is displayed. Shorter current statistics can be obtained without termination of process with signal SIGQUIT. If ping does not receive any reply packets at all it will exit with code 1. If a packet countand deadline are both specified, and fewer than count packets are received by the time thedeadline has arrived, it will also exit with code 1. On other error it exits with code 2. Otherwise it exits with code 0. This makes it possible to use the exit code to see if a host is alive or not. This program is intended for use in network testing, measurement and management. Because of the load it can impose on the network, it is unwise to use ping during normal operations or from automated scripts.

ICMP PACKET DETAILS

An IP header without options is 20 bytes. An ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packet contains an additional 8 bytes worth of ICMP header followed by an arbitrary amount of data. When apacketsize is given, this indicated the size of this extra

piece of data (the default is 56). Thus the amount of data received inside of an IP packet of type ICMP ECHO_REPLY will always be 8 bytes more than the requested data space (the ICMP header). If the data space is at least of size of struct timeval ping uses the beginning bytes of this space to include a timestamp which it uses in the computation of round trip times. If the data space is shorter, no round trip times are given.

DUPLICATE AND DAMAGED PACKETS

ping will report duplicate and damaged packets. Duplicate packets should never occur, and seem to be caused by inappropriate link-level retransmissions. Duplicates may occur in many situations and are rarely (if ever) a good sign, although the presence of low levels of duplicates may not always be cause for alarm. Damaged packets are obviously serious cause for alarm and often indicate broken hardware somewhere in the ping packet's path (in the network or in the hosts).

TRYING DIFFERENT DATA PATTERNS

The (inter)network layer should never treat packets differently depending on the data contained in the data portion. Unfortunately, data-dependent problems have been known to sneak into networks and remain undetected for long periods of time. In many cases the particular pattern that will have problems is something that doesn't have sufficient ``transitions'', such as all ones or all zeros, or a pattern right at the edge, such as almost all zeros. It isn't necessarily enough to specify a data pattern of all zeros (for example) on the command line because the pattern that is of interest is at the data link level, and the relationship between what you type and what the controllers transmit can be complicated. This means that if you have a data-dependent problem you will probably have to do a lot of testing to find it. If you are lucky, you may manage to find a file that either can't be sent across your network or that takes much longer to transfer than other similar length files. You can then examine this file for repeated patterns that you can test using the -p option of ping.

TTL DETAILS
The TTL value of an IP packet represents the maximum number of IP routers that the packet can go through before being thrown away. In current practice you can expect each router in the Internet to decrement the TTL field by exactly one. The TCP/IP specification states that the TTL field for TCP packets should be set to 60, but many systems use smaller values (4.3 BSD uses 30, 4.2 used 15). The maximum possible value of this field is 255, and most Unix systems set the TTL field of ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packets to 255. This is why you will find you can ``ping'' some hosts, but not reach them with telnet(1) or ftp(1). In normal operation ping prints the ttl value from the packet it receives. When a remote system receives a ping packet, it can do one of three things with the TTL field in its response: * Not change it; this is what Berkeley Unix systems did before the 4.3BSD Tahoe release. In this case the TTL value in the received packet will be 255 minus the number of routers in the round-trip path. *

Set it to 255; this is what current Berkeley Unix systems do. In this case the TTL value in the received packet will be 255 minus the number of routers in the path from the remote system to the pinging host. * Set it to some other value. Some machines use the same value for ICMP packets that they use for TCP packets, for example either 30 or 60. Others may use completely wild values.