what is ping in networking?

Answer 1

Maybe this will help you not just to understand what ping is but in searching for the meaning of something. Go to http://www.google.com.ph/ and key-in this line of text to the textbox 'define:Ping' without single quote or just click the link below to show an example

http://www.google.com.ph/search?hl=tl&q=define%3Aping&meta=

Answer 2

is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular host is reachable across an IP network. Ping works by sending ICMP “echo request” packets ("Ping?") to the target host and listening for ICMP “echo response” replies (sometimes dubbed "Pong!" as an analog from the Ping Pong table tennis sport.) Using interval timing and response rate, ping estimates the round-trip time (generally in milliseconds although the unit is often omitted) and packet loss (if any) rate between hosts.

The word ping is also frequently used as a verb or noun, where it can refer directly to the round-trip time, the act of running a ping program or measuring the round-trip time.
answer - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping

Answer 3

Pinging is a way of 1) testing the time it takes to reach a remote computer and 2) a way of making sure that the computer you are pinging is online. If your ping times are long, you have a slow response time from the remote computer. That affects uploading and downloading.

Answer 4

I agree with everything that the 1st poster told you, but since you asked that question, I have a feeling you would not understand a substantial part of what that poster said (no offence meant!)
I will try and simplify it for you
Ping is a command used to check if another computer on the network is alive/open to requests. The receiver then replies with a similar message to you. This also tells you how much of network traffic is there right now (based on how long it took the response to come back to you)
The command (issued from a command prompt) is quite simple: eg: ping www.google.com
The reply would look like this
----------------------------------------------------------
Pinging www.google.com [IP ADDRESS] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from IP ADDRESS: bytes=32 time=257ms TTL=241
Reply from IP ADDRESS: bytes=32 time=256ms TTL=241
Reply from IP ADDRESS: bytes=32 time=256ms TTL=241
Reply from IP ADDRESS: bytes=32 time=256ms TTL=241

Ping statistics for IP ADDRESS:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 256ms, Maximum = 257ms, Average = 256ms

As you can see, it shows you how long it took the remote PC to respond to a ping command. TTL is an acronym for Time To Leave and it is some logic that you can safely ignore for now.

Hope this helps