Networking / Beginners

The ping command

The ping command is the basic troubleshooting tool for TCP/IP. You use it to determine whether basic TCP/IP connectivity has been established between two computers. If you're having any kind of network trouble between two computers, the first troubleshooting step is almost always to see whether the computers can ping each other.

The basic syntax of ping is straightforward:

ping [options] address

The options can be

  • -c: The number of packets to send. If you omit this, ping continues to send packets until you interrupt it.
  • -d: Floods the network with packets, as many as 100 per second. Use with care!
  • -i: Specifies how many seconds to wait between sending packets. The default is one second. If you're having intermittent connection problems, you may try letting ping run for a while with this option set to a higher value, such as 60, to send a packet every minute.
  • -R: Displays the route the packets take to get to the destination computer.

TipPing will continue to ping the destination computer until you interrupt it by pressing Ctrl+Z.

You can specify the host to ping using an IP address, as in this example:

$ ping 192.168.1.100
PING 192.168.1.100 (192.168.1.100) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.100: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=0.382 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.100: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=0.345 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.100: icmp_seq=3 ttl=128 time=0.320 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.100: icmp_seq=4 ttl=128 time=0.328 ms

You can also ping using a DNS name, as in this example:

$ ping www.lowewriter.com
PING www.lowewriter.com (209.68.34.15) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from www.lowewriter.com (209.68.34.15): icmp_seq=1 ttl=47 time=88.9 ms
64 bytes from www.lowewriter.com (209.68.34.15): icmp_seq=2 ttl=47 time=87.9 ms
64 bytes from www.lowewriter.com (209.68.34.15): icmp_seq=3 ttl=47 time=88.3 ms
64 bytes from www.lowewriter.com (209.68.34.15): icmp_seq=4 ttl=47 time=87.2 ms
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In this tutorial:

  1. Linux Commands
  2. Command Shell Basics
  3. Editing commands
  4. Wildcards
  5. Redirection and piping
  6. Environment variables
  7. Shell scripts
  8. Directory and File Handling Commands
  9. The cd command
  10. The mkdir command
  11. The rmdir command
  12. The ls command
  13. The cp command
  14. The rm command
  15. The mv command
  16. The touch command
  17. The cat command
  18. Commands for Working with Packages and Services
  19. The rpm command
  20. Commands for Administering Users
  21. The usermod command
  22. The chage command
  23. The passwd command
  24. The newusers command
  25. The groupadd command
  26. The groupdel command
  27. Commands for Managing Ownership and Permissions
  28. The chgrp command
  29. The chmod command
  30. Networking Commands
  31. The ipconfig command
  32. The netstat command
  33. The ping command
  34. The route command
  35. The traceroute command