Ping = Packet Internet Groper

What does Ping do?

Ping is a tool used by a network person to establish if there is connectivity to the network.

Your computer has an ip address once it has connected to the network. However sometimes we are not sure if we are connected to the network. The network might have problems, the routers might be having problems, or our computer.

By pinging the network - we send 4 packets of information to another ip address. In theory if all is OK, all 4 will return. If the network has problems, you will lose the packets and they will not return. Or you will lose some of them.

Let us ping another ip address.

We are going to ping CBA's server 131.94.114.131

1. Go to start
2. Find DOS prompt (In Windows 2000) PROGRAMS, ACCESSORIES, COMMAND prompt and type PING (space) 131.94.114.131
3. This is what it should look like
4. C:\>ping 131.94.114.131
   
   OR  you can ping the URL 
   C:\>ping cba.fiu.edu

Pinging cba.fiu.edu [131.94.114.131] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 131.94.114.131: bytes=32 time=131ms TTL=126
Reply from 131.94.114.131: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=126
Reply from 131.94.114.131: bytes=32 time=120ms TTL=126
Reply from 131.94.114.131: bytes=32 time=120ms TTL=126

Ping statistics for 131.94.114.131:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 120ms, Maximum = 131ms, Average = 125ms

From the above exercise you see that 4 Packets were sent and 4 were received - therefore there is connectivity of my computer with the Internet, in this case. Each packet sent was 32 bytes, and it took 130 milliseconds for the first to go and come back and the others 130-120   and 120 ms. The average was 22 ms. Finally TTL means "time to live" which is how long the packets will be allowed to travel the net. Then they die!