Ping Help

The Ping tool tests whether or not a given host is online. Provide the following information:

Host name:

The machine name (eg. www.fifi.org) or an IP address (eg. 127.0.0.1) to probe.

Packet count:

The number of packets to send to the given host. If you choose to send more than one packet, you'll be able to get some statistics, like what was the fastest and longest trip.

Time between packets:

The delay in seconds between each packet to be sent.

Format results:

You can elect to see the raw (unformatted) ping output, or a table summary.

If you choose to get formatted results, the table has the following fields:

Sequence number:

The number the packet had when sent. If an host is far away, or if it's busy, some packets might be swapped, and will arrive in a different order than when sent (which is generally not a good sign).

Answer from:

Lists the host address of the machine which answered the ping. If the pinged host is behind a firewall, the firewall might answer for it.

Time To Live (TTL):

The number of gateways or routers a packet is allowed to go through before being destroyed (hence avoiding loops). Generally, when a host answer to the ping, it sets the return packet's TTL to 255 (or 64 for more recent machines or operating systems).

Subtract the TTL as shown from 255 (or 64) to get the number of gateways and routers crossed by the packet. If the shown TTL is less than 64, you can assume the base number for subtraction to be 64 since an ICMP packet crossing more than 200 routers is still to be seen!

You can get the names of these gateways and routers with traceroute tool.

Delay:

Time taken by the round trip. The figures are in milliseconds.

Statistics (packets sent, received, and loss; minimum, maximum and average delays):

These should be self-explanatory.