About the online Ping tool
The Ping tool provides a way of checking the reachability of a given server or host while measuring the network delay along the way. It sends a sequence of ICMP echo request packets from our server to the destination you specify and then records the responses and the time it takes them to arrive. It works with both IPv6 and IPv4.
Contents
Form fields
In most cases the default options will work well, and you need only enter the domain name or IP address that you want to ping.
- domain or IP address
- Specifies the domain name or IP address of the server or host that you want to ping. The tool won’t run if this field is blank.
- packets to send
- Sets the number of echo request packets to send to the destination. The number can be from 1 to 30.
- timeout
- Sets the time limit for waiting for responses to the test packets. It’s specified in milliseconds and can range from 1 tp 30000 (30 seconds).
- data size
- Specifies the number of data bytes to include in the test packet, allowing you to test whether the size of the packets affects its ability to get to the destination. The value can range from 0 to 100.
- ttl
- Sets the time-to-live (maximum hop count) of the outgoing packet, measured in hops. You can use this to limit the number of routers along the path that will forward the echo request packet. Normally, however, there’s no need to set this to anything but the default and maximum of 255.
- IP version
- Specifies the IP version to use for the pinging. “Auto” will cause the tool itself to choose the IP version based on what IP addresses are available for the target. If you choose to require IPv6 or IPv4, the target server must have an IP address of that version for the tool to continue.
- don’t fragment
- Sets the “don’t fragment” bit in outgoing IPv4 echo requests.
Results
For every packet sent, the Ping tool will produce a result line with the packet number in the “count” column.
If the tool successfully receives an echo response, it will show:
- the time-to-live (in hops) of the response,
- the round-trip-time (in milliseconds) required to send the request and receive the response,
- and the IP address of the responding target host.
If an echo request fails, the result line will contain an error code and possibly the IP address of the hop that responded with an error.
Statistics
The Ping tool gathers statistics for all echo requests and displays those results at the end. It keeps track of the number of successful requests versus failed requests, as well as the minimum, maximum, and average round-trip-times for the successful requests. The RTT statistics help assess the network latency between our server and the target.
Be sure to check out our other free network tools at CentralOps.net and our Whois API at Hexillion.com.