what does the ping command do?

Answer 1

The ping command will send a tiny request to an IP address and look for an answer. It's basically a way of seeing if the IP is alive or valid. Sort of like radar - how it bounces a sound off an object to see if it's there or not. When the ping comes back successful, you know the IP is valid and active.

Answer 2

It's named after the process of submarines finding stuff under water. The submarine sends a directed sound (which sounds like "ping"). Whether the sound bounces back for the submarine crew to hear tells them if there is something in that direction. The time it takes for the sound to bounce back tells the crew how far away the object is. But it doesn't tell the crew WHAT the object is. It could be a whale, or another submarine or a coral reef. You don't know. The computer ping does a similar thing. Ping simply sends a bit of information to some other network device, and waits for a reply. Then you know two things: if there is a network device at that address, and how long it takes for a packet of data to make a round trip from your computer to the device and back. It doesn't tell you what the network device is though. It could be another computer. It could be a router. It could be a firewall. You don't know. I primarily use it to make sure my network is working. It's the easiest way to figure out whether my new T-1 is up, or if the router is configured correctly. Game servers use it so that you know what your "latency" is between you and the game server and the other players.

Answer 3

PING Introduction
Once you have allocated an IP address to your network card, it is possible to test that there is some rudimentary communication between it and you. To do this we can use the PING command.

The PING command sends some simple TCP/IP data to the device that you specify, if the device is configured correctly, it will answer back. If you get an answer back, then there is a good chance that you have configured your card correctly. If there isn't a response, then you can assume that there will be a problem.

Answer 4

PING means Packet InterNet Groper, is a program and command that helps testing and debugging network and/or Internet connections. An 'Echo' command is sent to a specified computer and then waits for a response. The result is a report that displays the success or failure, usually a report back of a timed response in seconds, of the intended action.

Answer 5

Ping sends a packet of information to an address and records how much time it takes to come back.
the address can be an IP address or an alias that you have set up in 'hosts'
example from my machine

ping lp26a
64 bytes from {ip address}: icmp seq = 1: ttl = 61 time = 21ms
64 bytes from {ip address}: icmp seq = 2: ttl = 61 time = 22ms
64 bytes from {ip address}: icmp seq = 3: ttl = 61 time = 22ms
lp26a ping statistics
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 21/22/22 ms

it will tell you if a device is connected into the sytem, if there is no response (100% packet loss) it could be that the ip address is not connected, or that there is a network problem

Answer 6

ping uses the ICMP protocol’s mandatory ECHO_REQUEST datagram to elicit an ICMP ECHO_RESPONSE from a host or gateway. ECHO_REQUEST datagrams
(‘‘pings’’) have an IP and ICMP header, followed by a struct timeval and then an arbitrary number of ‘‘pad’’ bytes used to fill out the packet.

Or in simpler terms, it makes a request to the target host (e.g. domain name or IP address) to see if it's available. It's useful to tell if your network connectivity is up in the most basic way.

type "man ping" at the command line to find out more

Answer 7

Ping is used to test if you have connectivity between your computer and someone else's.

Answer 8

the ping sends a request to an addres or host to check its status..
to see if its actually active accepting packets or not.

;-)

Answer 9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping