Ping Online is a tool that allows you to verify whether a particular
IP address or host name is accessible.
Ping is commonly used
for diagnostics of network related problems. It simply answers the question
whether one computer connected to a network can reach another computer in
the network.
The ping command works over the
Internet Control Message Protocol
(ICMP). It sends a message called echo request to the target
host and waits for echo response packet to come back. The time between the
request is sent and the response is received is measured. The ping command
usually sends more than one echo request and counts statistics from all its
attempts. These statistics are displayed on the output.
When a computer does not respond to ping it might be a sign of its network
hardware failure, incorrect router or firewall configuration, as well as a
result of intentional configuration of the target host's firewall not to
response to echo requests. In case of machines connected to the Internet
such a policy that forbids to reply to ping requests is not rare. On the other
hand, in the local network environments the ping responsiveness is usually
required.
Ping Online is simple to use. You just need to specify the target host name or
IP address that you want to ping in the Host / IP address
field. By default the target IP address is set to your IP address. Then
click the "Ping!" button to start pinging. When you specify the host name,
it will be translated to the corresponding IP address, to which the echo
requests will be sent.
You can also set some other parameters of the ping command:
- Timeout – Specifies the number of milliseconds to wait for each reply.
- Count – The number of echo requests to send.
- TTL – TTL stands for Time To Live and determines the number of network nodes
the echo request packet can go through. Each router in the network
decreases the TTL value by 1 and when it hits zero, the packet is no
longer sent forward and it is discarded.
- Buffer size – The size of additional information transmitted in the ping packets.
The maximal permitted duration of ping is 180 seconds. This means Timeout*Count
should not exceed 180000.
