- The ping utility sends out small data packets and asks the other computer to return these data packets. The user can specify a number, such as four packets. If the network is not reliable, the other computer may not receive all of the data packets, and it may only send a few of them back. The ping utility can tell the user if it sends out four packets but only receives two packets back.
- The ping utility can also report the amount of time that the user's computer has to wait before it receives a response. A high ping time suggests that the network may be overloaded with other users. If the user plans to use a network program, such as an action based computer game, which requires a speedy connection, she can ping the other players to make sure that the connection speed is acceptable.
- A packet often passes through several computer networks to reach the target computer. A university student who uses the ping command from his dorm room may send the packet through his local network first, and then across the Internet using several servers. The ping command does not tell the user which servers the packet travels through, which is inconvenient if one of these servers is down. The student can use the traceroute command instead, which does report the IP address of each server.
- A malicious user can use pings to shut down a server. During a denial of service attack, many computers send ping requests to the target server. The packets overload the server so it can't respond to requests from the people who normally use it. The server administrator may limit the number of ping packets that the network transfers at one time, or change the size of the ping packets to which the server responds. According to Indiana University, the normal size of each ping packet when the computer uses a Windows operating system is 32 bytes.
previous post