What is ping, is it needed?

Question

What is the purpose of ping. On advice I have turned it off in my routers firewall. Things seem ok, but have I done right.

Answer 1

If you start having problems with your internet they the internet provider pings your computer and it is needed.Ping is one of the first tools to use to check computer, router and Internet connectivity. It's run at a command prompt, but getting the basic information is quite easy. You can do the whole thing in 30 seconds.

1. To run ping, type Start > Run.
2. Type cmd in the Run window, and click OK. A black and white command line window pops up.
3. Type ping followed by an IP address or a DNS address.
4. Press Enter to execute the command. Three useful examples:
1. ping 127.0.0.1 (This is a "loopback ping" — your computer trying to talk to itself. This tests whether your computer is able to handle Ethernet traffic. If this has a negative result, the computer has an operating system problem.)
2. ping 192.168.1.1 (If the result is "Request timed out", type ping 192.168.0.1. If that also times out, then the computer is not making a connection to your router.)
3. ping www.netgear.com. (Tests whether your computer can contact Internet computers.)

When there is no problem, the ping results look as shown in the following screenshot. Three items of interest in the results are highlighted with arrows.

Answer 2

Ping is a test to see how long it takes for information to get from one computer device to another. It's like saying, "Can you hear me?" and you say, "Yes, I can." If it took 3 seconds for you to respond to me the Ping would be 3 seconds. On a computer the lower the # the faster the response.

Turning ping off on your routers firewall allows your router to stay hidden from outside people trying to find if someone is there or automated programs looking for a computer at random addresses. By turning off ping, no one will know you are there because it won't respond.

Answer 3

Pinging is just when a computer sends a little bit of data to a website, and waits for the data to come back. It then measures how long it took for the data to come back, the signal strength, etc etc. It's not really a bad thing, people use it to diagnose Internet connection problems.

Your firewall probably wants to block it because there are a couple of ways people can exploit the Ping system to crack into your machine. However this is relatively rare because there are better ways of getting into people's systems.

Answer 4

Ping is to check if some machine (with network card) is available. It also helps you find out the speed of connection to the machine which you are Pinging. Turning it off will not effect any normal functionality of your router, it is better to turn it off any way to avoid DOS (denial of service) attacks that some one may try on your router.

Answer 5

Pinging is also a way to check if your computer is connected on a network and is used as a tool to help resolve net work problems.

Hackers will send pings to ranges of I.P. adresses to try and locate open computers. If you have a good firewall you will have no problems as your machine will not reply.

Answer 6

Ping is a test to see if your computer is received its information packets from your ISP.

Answer 7

dont b confused abt ping, its ok what u've done.
pinging is just to make urself know that all connections of ur workstation to the server is ok or not.

Answer 8

ping is used to test if u have a connexion between ur ip and other ip's

Answer 9

make sue you do no longer receive others or produce different information superhighway server,or hear the internet music .in case you do no longer try this, possibly the priority from you ISP or the interest server. if so ,you cann't substitute something,purely watch for the substitute out of your isp or interest server.

Answer 10

they were a great double act