Built For Designers & Developers

How to perform a ping test

What is a Ping?

A ping sends a small packet of information using ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) from your computer to a requested destination and returns with the round-trip time. It is helpful for troubleshooting accessibility or performance issues you may be having or simply a quick way to tell if a host is “up” or performing slowly or intermittently performing poorly. Site5 support may ask you to run a “ping” to your server and then send the results back so we can analyze them.

Please remember that some hosts and routers block or prioritize ICMP (ping traffic) lower than high priority traffic like web traffic. Although ping is a useful troubleshooting tool, it is not fool proof and the returned data should not be accepted on its own.

You can ping a location using these steps:

Windows 7 & Vista:

• Click on the “Start” menu and type “cmd” into the search field (where it says “Search programs and files” or “Start search”).
• Push the Enter key on your keyboard. A DOS prompt window will open up.
• Type the following command in the command window: “ping yourdomain.com” (remember to replace yourdomain.com with the actual domain name you want to ping) and click the enter/return key on your keyboard
• The output will look similar to the following:

C:\Users\User>ping -n 10 site5.com
 
Pinging site5.com [74.53.50.50] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=61ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=65ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=64ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=76ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=65ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=128
 
Ping statistics for 74.53.50.50:
    Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 60ms, Maximum = 76ms, Average = 64ms

Windows XP/2000/NT/95/98/ME:

• Click on the “Start” menu and select “Run…”
• Type “cmd” (WinXP/Win2000/WinNT) or “command” (Win95/Win98/WinMe) and hit the Enter key on your keyboard. A DOS prompt window will open up.
• Type the following command in the command window: “ping -n 10 yourdomain.com” (remember to replace yourdomain.com with the actual domain you want to test)
• The output will look similar to the following:

C:\Users\User>ping -n 10 site5.com
 
Pinging site5.com [74.53.50.50] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=61ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=65ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=64ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=76ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=65ms TTL=128
Reply from 74.53.50.50: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=128
 
Ping statistics for 74.53.50.50:
    Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 60ms, Maximum = 76ms, Average = 64ms

• You can copy and paste this into an email by selecting the upper-left hand icon and selecting “Edit -> Mark”
• You can now “select” the text of the window using your mouse cursor. Select the text of the results and hit “enter”. This will put the text on the clipboard. You can then use your keyboard and press Control + V to paste the results into any other Windows application, including your e-mail client or a text field in a web browser (in a Backstage ticket response).

Mac OS X

• On Mac OS X, you will need to navigate to the Applications folder > Utilities > and then open the “Network Utility” application.
• Once the Network Utility is running, click on the “Ping” tab and specify a domain or IP address to check. The default of “Send only 10 pings” will be fine.
• Click on the “Ping” button to start the ping test.
• The output will look similar to the following:

Ping has started…
 
PING site5.com (74.53.50.50): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=0 ttl=45 time=62.190 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=1 ttl=45 time=64.969 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=2 ttl=45 time=76.836 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=3 ttl=45 time=61.060 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=4 ttl=45 time=65.305 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=5 ttl=45 time=63.224 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=6 ttl=45 time=62.646 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=7 ttl=45 time=71.861 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=8 ttl=45 time=63.374 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=9 ttl=45 time=63.060 ms
 
--- site5.com ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 61.060/65.453/76.836/4.730 ms

UNIX/Linux:

• *NIX or Linux users can ping a domain or IP by opening a terminal window. Consult your window manager (Gnome, KDE, etc.) documentation if you are unsure how to do this.
• Next, you will need to type in “ping -t 10 yourdomain.com” or “ping -t 10 IP Address” (replacing the IP address or domain name with the domain/IP you would like to test).
• Now, press the enter button on your keyboard to see the ping results.
• The output will look similar to the following:

# ping -t 10 site5.com
PING site5.com (74.53.50.50): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=0 ttl=45 time=62.144 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=1 ttl=45 time=62.141 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=2 ttl=45 time=68.601 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=3 ttl=45 time=62.239 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=4 ttl=45 time=61.987 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=5 ttl=45 time=60.840 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=6 ttl=45 time=66.491 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=7 ttl=45 time=68.235 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=8 ttl=45 time=72.815 ms
64 bytes from 74.53.50.50: icmp_seq=9 ttl=45 time=67.982 ms
 
--- site5.com ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 60.840/65.347/72.815/3.805 ms