Ping Test
Ping is a connectivity test of whether a remote machine is powered on and has an active network interface. It works by sending a small "packet" of data to a server to see if you get a response. The Ping program shows, in milliseconds, how fast the server "replied" to your Ping. It also shows if you lose any packets or "timeout" before receiving the reply from the server. The RTT ( Round Trip Time) is shown in ms (milliseconds) and anything under 100 is very good, up to 400 are typical, over 400 can indicate a problem but can be due to attempting to ping a distant site, say in Australia
How To Ping
In Win95/98/ME go to Start/ Run/ type “command” click OK.
In Win 2000/NT go to Start/ Run/ type “cmd” click OK.
This brings up the command prompt window.
Type “ping ***.***.***.***” ( the IP address you want to test connectivity to)
If successful it will return as per example
C:\>ping 212.38.173.200
Pinging 212.38.173.200 with 32 bytes of data
"reply from 212.38.173.4: Destination host unreachable.""reply from 212.38.173.4: Destination host unreachable.""reply from 212.38.173.4: Destination host unreachable.""reply from 212.38.173.4: Destination host unreachable."
Or
"request timed out.""request timed out.""request timed out.""request timed out."
This tells us whether or not the user traffic is able to get through to the target IP address and allows us to troubleshoot connection problems
