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The TCP/IP Guide  9  TCP/IP Application Layer Protocols, Services and Applications (OSI Layers 5, 6 and 7)       9  TCP/IP Key Applications and Application Protocols            9  TCP/IP Administration and Troubleshooting Utilities and Protocols

TCP/IP Host Name Utility (hostname) 1 2 3 4 5 TCP/IP Route Tracing Utility (traceroute/tracert/traceroute6)

Basic ping Use

The most basic use of the ping command is to enter it by itself with the IP address of a host. Virtually all implementations also allow a host name to be used, which will be resolved to an IP address automatically. When the utility is invoked with no additional options, default values are used for parameters such as what size message to send, how many messages to be sent, how long to wait for a reply, and so on. The utility will transmit a series of Echo messages to the host and report back whether or not a reply was received for each; if a reply is seen, it will also indicate how long it took for the response to be received. When the program is done, it will provide a statistical summary showing what percentage of the Echo messages received a reply, and the average amount of time for them to be received.

Table 284 shows an example using the ping command on a Windows XP computer (mine!), which by default sends four 32-byte Echo messages and allows four seconds before considering an Echo message lost. I use a satellite Internet connection that has fairly high latency and also occasionally drops packets. This isn’t great for me, but it is useful for illustrating how ping works.

Table 284: Verifying Communication Using the ping Utility

D:\aa>ping www.pcguide.com Pinging pcguide.com [209.68.14.80] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 209.68.14.80: bytes=32 time=582ms TTL=56 Reply from 209.68.14.80: bytes=32 time=601ms TTL=56 Request timed out. Reply from 209.68.14.80: bytes=32 time=583ms TTL=56 Ping statistics for 209.68.14.80: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 3, Lost = 1 (25% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 582ms, Maximum = 601ms, Average = 588ms

TCP/IP Host Name Utility (hostname) 1 2 3 4 5 TCP/IP Route Tracing Utility (traceroute/tracert/traceroute6)

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