What is the origin of the word ping as used in computer networking?

Answer 1

it was originally contrived to match submariners' term for the sound of a returned sonar pulse

When submarine crews wanted to test the distance of an object, they would send a sonar "ping" and wait to hear the echo. In the computer world, Ping is a program that "bounces" a request off of another computer over a network to see if the remote computer is still responding. If the ping comes back, the remote computer is still alive.

Answer 2

It dates back to the early days of sonar (an acronym for Sound Operated Navigation And Ranging) in WW2. The sonar made a clear, high-pitched noise called a "ping," which would reflect off other objects and bounce back at the sender. Depending on the time and direction of the bounced-back "ping," the sonar operator would know how far away the object was and in what direction; doing this over a period of time let the operator determine how fast the object was moving relative to the sonar operator's vehicle.

The term "ping" got carried over to radar (RAdio Direction And Ranging) which does the same thing but with microwaves. By this point the term was taking on the generic meaning of an action taken to determine the existence, location and other data of remote objects.

The origin of the Internet, of course, is in DARPA -- Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- so many of the same electronics personnel (as opposed to "electronic personnel," which is a subject more suitable to Asimov or Lucas :-) were used to thinking of a "ping" as a way of checking in to find out what they could about a remote object. It was natural, therefore, to use the word "ping" as the name of the command to send packets to a remote IP address and count how long it takes them to return and what (if any) data loss is occurring over the connection.

Answer 3

To my knowledge the response time of a network is measured by sending a info packet which goes to the other end or main server and come back to the place of origin. The time taken for the response is then measured and speed of the network measured.
The process of sending this info packet or signal for testing purposes is called "ping"

Answer 4

I believe it started with the word "hopping" as packets of data were bounced off network relays causing greater delays in response times. Nowadays things happen in the blink of an eye and the hops happen a lot faster. However a common answer is to do with sonar pulses from submarines and the echos caused there. I think it's one of those things with multiple answers that will never truely have a proper answer.