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Using ping

Ping is a tool commonly used to find the status of a device on a network. Ping is based on the ICMP protocol[1]. When a Ping process request is sent out as an ICMP echo to the target device, it replies with an ICMP echo reply if the device is available. View the Images below to see how the ping command is used to test network connectivity.

Purpose of Ping

Ping is used to send a test packet to a device to find out whether it is reachable and how long the packet takes to reach the device. There are two important purposes.
  1. test the network availability to device
  2. network latency between two devices
A simple way to check whether we have access to the particular host is through ICMP by sending ping packets to the host. But this method works only if ICMP and ping is enabled in that network. If ICMP is disabled, we can not get a proper response.

TCP/IP Illustration
The first test to use when you suspect a network problem is to verify that you can ping your machine. Note the sequence numbers which let you see if packets are being received in the same order in which they are sent, and the time, which is the round-trip time for the packet
1) The first test to use when you suspect a network problem is to verify that you can ping your machine. Note the sequence numbers which let you see if packets are being received in the same order in which they are sent, and the time, which is the round-trip time for the packet
To see loss statistics, try:
2) To see loss statistics, try:
Ping a distant machine (the -q option suppresses the line-by-line output) and check the round-trip time:
3) Ping a distant machine (the -q option suppresses the line-by-line output) and check the round-trip time:

[1](ICMP)Internet Control Message Protocol: The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a network layer protocol used by network devices to diagnose network communication issues. ICMP is mainly used to determine whether or not data is reaching its intended destination in a timely manner.