What is ping? How to ping correctly?

Every more or less advanced user of the Internet and local network is faced with such a procedure as ping. Most often, the service center technician at the provider is asked to do this in order to understand the problem. In this article we will look at what ping is, what it is for, and how to ping correctly.

What is ping?

Ping is a process that allows you to check the quality of the network and its speed to a specific server. Most often, ping is carried out using the console (command line), both in Windows and Linux operating systems. There are also special programs for pinging. It is worth noting the convenience and quality of this method of checking the local network and the Internet, since it is quite simple and very informative.

Pinging means that you send a certain number of data packets from your computer to a specific device, both on a local network and on the Internet. Thanks to this exchange of packets, you can obtain information on the quality of the connection.

If sent packets are not returned, then this means there are problems with the connection. Packets that are not returned are called "losses". The more lost packets, the worse. If the packets are lost in full, then this means either a lack of connection to the network, or the inaccessibility of the device to which the ping was made - it all depends on what exactly you pinged. The response speed is also important: the lower it is, the better the quality of the connection from your device to the pinged one.

What is ping used for?

As the site experts said above, ping is necessary in order to check the quality of the Internet connection and the speed to a specific network device. Let's look at an example of situations in which ping is necessary and very useful.

The first situation when pinging occurs is problems with the Internet, for example: you are working in a browser, and Internet pages load very slowly or do not load at all. The second situation is when the Internet simply disappears or the Internet connection is interrupted. The third situation is when streaming audio and video playback slows down. The fourth situation is when there are problems connecting to something: a website, game server or other device on the network. Thus, thanks to ping, you can find out whether there are any problems with the network or Internet connection, where exactly the problem is and what it is.

Quite often, ping is checked for online games where high speed data exchange with the server is required.

How to ping correctly

In order to ping, you need to open the console and enter the appropriate command, indicating the address of the device or resource with which you want to check the connection.

In order to check the quality of your Internet connection, ping the Google DNS server using the command (which must be entered in the console):

In the same way, you can ping not only servers and network devices, but also websites. In order to check the quality of the connection to Yandex, enter the following command:

In order to check the connection to the provider's server, ping its DNS server or another local resource, for example a router on the roof.

To check the functionality of your home local network, ping your router with the command:

ping 192.168.1.1

In the Linux operating system, ping continues endlessly until you stop it yourself by pressing Ctrl+C. In Windows, standard ping is performed by sending only 4 packets. In order to send a larger number of packets, the prefix “-n” is added to the ping command indicating the number of packets to be sent. In order to send 100 packets, for example, to the Google DNS server, write the following command:

ping –n 100 8.8.8.8

To send an endless ping in Windows, add “-t” to the standard command separated by a space, and to stop it, press Ctrl+C. For example, we perform an endless ping to the Google DNS server:

ping 8.8.8.8 –t

After pinging is completed, a report will be displayed below, the analysis of which will help you understand the state of the network.