How to Conduct a Ping Test?

Ping is a network utility that checks the connectivity between two nodes in a computer network. Let me explain how this utility helps to find the network connectivity issues.

Ping sends ICMP packets to the destination device, and if the packets reach the destination successfully, the source device will receive ICMP replies.

If the ICMP packets fail to reach the destination, we will get a ping packet loss reply.

Let us check how to conduct a ping from your computer. Here, I teach you how to check the connectivity between your computer and this website (CoreNetworkZ.com) with a ping test.

Let us check how to perform a ping test. You want a computer and an Internet connection to conduct the ping test. Here, I explain the ping test on a Windows computer.

1. Press the Windows and R keys together to open the Run.

2. Type cmd on the Run and click OK.

3. Type ping www.corenetworkz.com on the Command Prompt. Press the Enter key.

4. You can see this in the screenshot below.

   
   
   

If you analyze the test results, you can say the ping test was successful. This computer received four replies from the CoreNetworkZ.com server. It says the connectivity between this Windows computer and the CoreNetworkZ.com server is fine.

You have learned the ping test and how to perform it on your computer. Let us check some of our advanced tutorials that use the ping test concepts.

1. How to Change Default TTL Value Set On a Packet?
   
   
2. Transmit failed. General Failure
   
   
3. Automatically Set Continuous Echo Requests To a Destination Until We Manually Stop
   
   
4. How to Change Default Size of ICMP Echo Request On Your Computer(ping -l)?
   
   
5. How to Check Optimum MTU Size Value Of Your Network?
   
   
6. Packet Needs To Be Fragmented But DF Set -Reason and Solution
   
   
7. Tell Packets to Don't Fragment While in Test
   

Each of the tutorials uses the ping test concept.

Let us check and learn the operation of the ping utility. When we ping a destination host from our computer, ping sends ICMP echo request packets to the destination.

If the packets reach the destination host successfully, our computer will receive an ICMP reply from the destination. If there is no valid ICMP reply from the destination, ping displays a packet loss message.

The ping operation will fail if there is a connection issue between two network nodes. However, we may get a few details from the ICMP error codes to troubleshoot the issue. Here, we check some common ping error codes and the solution.

1. Ping Reply: Destination Host Unreachable
   
   
2. Ping Packets Error: Destination Net Unreachable
   
   
3. ICMP Reply: Request Timed Out
   
   
4. ICMP Echo Gives Hardware Error
   
   
5. Request Could not Find Host. Please Check the Name and Try again
   
   
6. Transmission Failed Error Code 31
   
   
7. Error 628: The Connection was Terminated by the Remote computer before it could be Completed
   
   
8. Error 797: A Connection to the Remote Access Server was not Made because the Modem was not Found
   
   
9. Error 769: The Specified Destination is not Reachable
   
   
10. The Requested Operation Requires Elevation
    
    
11. Either you Specified a Destination Address that is not Valid or Remote Server is Down
    

You have learned the importance of Ping utility. Though it is a helpful utility, it can also cause harm.

The same utility can be used to prevent a destination host from working smoothly. The concept of DDOS attack is derived from it. Here I give a list of tutorials that tell the malicious use of ping utility to disturb the normal operations of devices connected to the Internet.

1. Denial of Service (DOS) attacks
   
   
2. How to Conduct Smurf Attack?
   
   
3. How to Perform TCP Split Handshake Attack?
   
   
4. Guide to DDOS Attack

I hope you enjoyed this article and learned how to perform a ping test. If you enjoyed this article, I recommend a few recent posts.