What is Ping ?

Whenever we want to test our network  speed or network connection we use ping.

What is ping ?

Ping(Packet InterNet Groper)is a  computer software utility tool.It is used to verify that a computer can communicate over the network with another computer or network device.It is mainly used for calculating response time.

What is meant by Response time ?

Among two different places like host and destination.When we send message from host to destination and how much time to get response back from destination to host is known as Response time.It is also known as round trip time or reaction time.

Response time is implemented by Ping with the help of  Internet Control Message Protocol(ICMP) i.e, in the same network when we ping two nodes,it sends Echo Request packets from source to destination and waiting for response,based on the Echo replay packets or response from destination to source it calculates Response time.

   

Ping is measured in milliseconds(ms).If ping time is less then the system response is more.For online gamers, if the ping time is less the gaming experience is better.

   

Ping can be used for different purposes.

• If we know the host name we can easily find the dot address with the help of ping.
• It also gives the statistics data like network errors,packet data loss.

Sample Ping test:

The following is the output of running ping on windows. Example google.com

In this example round trip is 33 milliseconds and it has no data loss.