Upon receipt of the packet, the pinged device returns a response-called the “pong.” Transmitted over the network’s switch and router, the data packet arrives at the device with the specified address. The “ping”-a data packet-is sent out to an IP address. Ping, a program authored in 1983 by Mike Muuss, operates analogously to a sonar using echolocation. An admin can send a single ping to verify the status of an IP address, or they can execute a ping sweep, contacting a breadth of addresses (perhaps even all the addresses within a network) to get a holistic view of network device availability. A hallmark function in almost all PCs, ping helps ensure all devices with an IP address on the network are online-in other words, “pinging” certifies all devices are live, available, and performing networking operations at speed. Most network administrators are more than familiar with the ping utility. The ping utility is a basic but integral feature in network management-it monitors device availability, network latency, and packet loss within a network. Why You Should Invest in a Ping Monitor Tool
I also make my case around the importance of using ping monitor software like Engineer’s Toolset ™ to enhance ping capabilities and help support your ability to provide reliable network performance. Pinging informs IT professionals about the state of their network: the availability status of all devices, latency rate of network requests, percentage of data packet loss, and more.įor this reason, it’s important to understand the history of ping and how the ping utility works. The program has built-in reporting features, so you can generate detailed reports for selected hosts.Routinely conducting ping sweeps has a variety of benefits. These data include information about the host uptime, latency, outages, etc. Statistical data can be used to assess the host performance during any selected historical period. The program uses ping results to calculate different metrics and to provide access to detailed statistics for every host.
You can also export the ping results into a file and open it in external tools. The program stores all ping test results, so you can see the host pings on the timeline chart for any selected period. It is possible to set custom thresholds and tune the metrics used to determine the connection quality. Based on the results of the latest pings, it calculates the packet loss, latency and jitter metrics and uses them to estimate the current connection quality to the host as Good, Warning, Bad or Critical. The program uses ping test results to assess the quality of network connections to the monitored hosts. In this case, the program saves information about the outage and sends notifications of the host state change. If there is no reply to several ping echo requests sent in a row, it means that the host has the Down state and is unreachable. If a host replies to ping echo requests, it means that it is available and has the Up state. The program executes ping tests on a regular basis for every monitored host to track its state and connection quality. The program uses ICMP ping to test the availability of network hosts.