Ping

See also: Software, Microsoft Windows

Ping is a command to determine if a remote host can respond at all. From Microsoft Windows you open a command Prompt and type the command ping hostname|address. You can use an IP Address or you can use a Host Name. Sometimes they are interchangeable, meaning you can use the hostname instead of the IP Address.

If the server is working correctly, you'll see something like this:

when you ping the server ''www.kb0odu.us'. You can see that this computer has an IP Address of 192.168.3.30 and it took an average of 8 milliseconds (8ms) to respond (the first time it tried to talk to it, it took 16ms, the second time it took 4ms, the third time it took 5ms and the last time it took 7ms) and it is located at an address of 192.168.3.30 on a network. This means the server is up and functioning. The service (like a web server) may NOT be, but at least you can talk to (connect to) the server that is hosting.

If the server was not available, meaning it exists but it can't be reached, you'd get a message like this:

This means, “I know this server, but I can't reach it. It won't answer me.”

If the server doesn't exist, however, you'll get this message.

This means that not only can I not reach it (talk to it), I don't even know it's address.