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Even though you are not a networking expert, you may have encountered the
term PING, when using computers, networking devices like wireless routers,
online apps or when playing games on the internet. If you want to know what
the ping is when it comes to computers, how the ping command works, how to
understand the data it displays, and how to use it in Windows, read this tutorial:
What is ping?
Ping is a command line tool, available in many operating systems, that you can
use to test whether your computer or device can reach a destination computer
through the network and/or the internet.
To better understand things, take a look at the screenshot below, where we ran a
ping command, in Windows: ping www.microsoft.com.
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11/8/2019 What is the ping command? What is ping in apps and games? How to use ping, in Windows? | Digital Citizen
As you can see, the ping utility sends four echo requests by default, and it
shares statistics and data based on the replies it should get from the target.
If you want to use the ping tool in Windows, open the Command Prompt
[https://www.digitalcitizen.life/7-ways-launch-command-prompt-
windows-7-windows-8] or PowerShell
[https://www.digitalcitizen.life/simple-questions-what-
powershell-what-can-you-do-it]. Then, enter ping followed by the IP
address (or the hostname) of the target computer or device. For example, type
something like: "ping 192.168.1.1" or "ping www.bing.com" without the
quotation marks.
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NOTE: You can use / or - before any parameter of the ping command. They are
interchangeable and lead to the same result.
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11/8/2019 What is the ping command? What is ping in apps and games? How to use ping, in Windows? | Digital Citizen
/4 - forces the use of the IPv4 address and it is used in conjunction with
hostnames, not IP addresses. For example, write "ping /4
www.microsoft.com" (without the quotation marks), and it returns the
IPv4 address of the hostname.
/6 - forces the use of the IPv6 address and it is used in conjunction with
hostnames, not IP addresses. For example, write "ping /6
www.microsoft.com" and you see the IPv6 address of the hostname.
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11/8/2019 What is the ping command? What is ping in apps and games? How to use ping, in Windows? | Digital Citizen
You may want to use a finite number of Echo request messages to send, using
"ping -n count hostname" like in the example below:
In the screenshot above you can see that the host was initially available and
replying to the ping command, and it then went offline, and all the remaining
requests timed out.
If you know the IP address of a host, and you want to know the hostname, you
can use "ping -a IP address". The ping tries to resolve and display the
hostname of the target and then returns it, similar to the screenshot below.
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