what is ping

**shilpa** · 27-08-2008

Hello friends,
I am a noob & i want to know what is ping?
What do you guys mean by word ping? Its something i want to know about it.
Can you guys help me out?

**Musrat** · 27-08-2008

Ping is a basic Internet program that most of us use daily. Ping is a basic Internet program that allows a user to verify that a particular IP address exists and can accept requests. The verb ping means the act of using the ping utility or command. Ping is used diagnostically to ensure that a host computer you are trying to reach is actually operating. user can't ping a host, then the user will be unable to use the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to send files to that host. Ping can also be used with a host that is operating to see how long it takes to get a response back.

**Halloween** · 27-08-2008

"Ping is a program that sends a series of packets over a network or the Internet to a specific computer in order to generate a response from that computer. The other computer responds with an acknowledgment that it received the packets. Ping was created to verify whether a specific computer on a network or the Internet exists and is connected."
Some have claimed that the word "ping" is actually an acronym for "Packet Internet (or Inter-Network) Groper", deliberately contrived to play on the fact that pinging with a computer is similar to what submariners do with sonar. Both the computer and the submarine's sonar send out a "ping", in the form of either a series of packets or a brief burst of sound. The ping "bounces" off the target and then returns to let you know the target is there.

**Devasis** · 27-08-2008

Ping is built into almost every network-capable operating system. To ping a computer, go to a command prompt and enter ping , a space, and then the network or Internet address you wish to contact. For example, enter the following at a Windows XP command prompt:

ping 66.218.72.201

**Jimmy24** · 27-08-2008

Well said friends!
You need to know the IP address of the computer you want to ping, The IP address is the 4 numbers with dots between them. The numbers are always between 0 and 255. You can also ping a domain name so: ping http://forums.techarena.in <enter> will try to ping our website and report back the IP address at the same time. This is known as DNS translation - turning the user friendly names into computer friendly numbers.

**man-u** · 27-08-2008

The ping command is used by hackers, but also it is used to verify a connection between two computer and/or a router or IP Address. The ping command is used to troubleshoot connections. If you ping an IP Address and you get a reply, this means your connection is good and packets are being sent and received. If you do not get a reply, then there is no connection and packets are being lost.

**Giovanni** · 27-08-2008

If you could ping external sites by both IP address and Name, but cannot browse the web, likely your web browser is misconfigured.
Double check that you don't have an incorrect or not needed Proxy server assigned.
For the Internet Explorer - Tools / Internet Options / Connections tab / LAN settings button. Uncheck both Automatically detect settings and Use a proxy server for your LAN.

**shilpa** · 29-08-2008

Thank you guys for that valuable information! I was totally unaware of this ping thing!

You have really helped me!

**samar69** · 04-09-2008

What do you mean by request time out which we get while pinging anything? Why we are getting it?

**BiGMaCHiNe** · 04-09-2008

Basically you get it when it takes too long to establish an IP connection between the client (e.g. your Web browser) and the server (e.g. site you are pinging to). So it gives you the timeout indicating you that the request made for the connection establishment to the server (i.e the site) has been lost and it has finally terminated the connection.

**shilpa** · 04-09-2008

Hey thanks BiGMaCHiNe!
Can you explain why exactly this connection fails?
I mean connection between my web browser & the server? What are the reasons behind this?

**Fabian** · 04-09-2008

It can also occur if there is a lot of load on your net connection. So the server or the site is ready for the establishment of the connection but the client or your web browser or your network is not capable of holding the connection and needs to terminate the connection.

**BiGMaCHiNe** · 04-09-2008

Can you explain why exactly this connection fails?
I mean connection between my web browser & the server? What are the reasons behind this?

Hi shilpa

Actually the connection fails if either the packet sent by your tcp for connection establishment was lost or the server was not ready (may be busy or closed) for the connection or if it has received the establishment request but the confirmation sent by the server didn't received the client (i.e your tcp ) or also if the client closed down after sending the request may be due to some reason.