How to Ping an IP Address

A skill paramount to network troubleshooting is the ability to ping an IP address. Ping utilizes the ICMP ECHO protocol and simply sends a packet to a specified destination. The packet that is sent is called an ECHO_REQUEST. If the target destination is reachable, it will generate an ECHO_REPLY and send it back. When the ECHO_REPLY is received, connectivity between two hosts on a network is verified.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• internet access
• computer

1. Open up a terminal session on your Linux pc. This can be done by clicking on the terminal icon at the bottom bar or clicking on the home button and looking for “Xterm”.

2. Once in the terminal, type “ping”; do not press enter.

3. Press the spacebar and input any options you want to enable; do not press enter. These options can specify exactly how the packet travels the network.

4. Press the spacebar and input the destination IP address. This is the IP address of the host with whom you want to verify connectivity

5. Press Enter. This will initiate the ping command.

6. Press the CTRL and ‘C’ keys simultaneously to end the ping and view a summary of the results.

Tips & Warnings

• A detailed explanation of all of the “ping” parameters can be obtained any time by typing “ping –help”.
• For troubleshooting purposes, remember that the IP address 127.0.0.1 is the loopback. Ping this first to ensure that the local NIC is functioning properly.
• By default, the ping command in Linux will continue to send ECHO_REQUESTS until you terminate it with CTRL+C. To define how many packets are sent before finishing, add–c [number]; number being the number of requests you want sent.

[my3units]

on 2/9/2009 I always forget the CTRL-C command thanks for that.

I also use

www.network-tools.in

it give a remote ping which i can compare to my ping to see if i have an issue locally that i can fix.