Running Ping from Windows

The ping command is one of the simplest commands that can be used for diagnosing networking problems, but it is also one I would be hard pressed to do without.  The primary use of the command is to send a network message to another system asking that system to respond back.  By doing this you can easily verify that the remote system can be reached from your system and get a gauge of the general transfer speed between the two systems.



A ping of the default gateway, which can be found using ipconfig, will show you whether or not you at least have basic network connectivity.

C:\Users\Manny>ping 192.168.1.1

Pinging 192.168.1.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

A ping of  a site such as www.google.com or www.yahoo.com will show you not only whether or you can reach that system, but whether or not your DNS resolution is working.

C:\Users\Manny>ping www.google.com
Ping request could not find host www.google.com. Please check the name and
try again. 

ping with the -f and -l options is sometimes used to determine the MTU for a given connection, but that is a discussion for later.

Remember because ping is a command line utility and it must be run from a Window's command window.  There are two basic ways to do this:

Either,
1)  Go to the Start menu and select Run...
     In the the Run dialog enter cmd /k ping hostname or ip address

Or
2)  Open a command window and then run ping hostname or ip address in the window

Note: For versions of windows earlier than XP, use command instead of cmd