Ping or Pong?
De BISAWiki
That's right you guessed it lets talk about the hit video game that swept the world nearly 40 years ago in 1972.
No wait that is not right. Where did my mind wander to? we are actually here to talk about ping. which is actually younger than pong, and was born in 1983 to help network administrators discover other devices that were connected to the network.
Anyway now that my mind is on track, I just wanted to provide a quick refresh to everyone about the importance of using ping when troubleshooting.
I will do my best to keep this one quick and easy today. I just want to cover the different responses, and also a few strategies for pinging that will help you resolve issues.
The Responses:
The responses are the most important thing to keep an eye on when pinging, knowing what each one means will help guide you down the right troubleshooting path. Before we get into detail about this we will give cover the top responses that you normally will see when you type in ping:
Reply from. This one is usually our friend. When you see a reply from the address that you pinged that tells you that communication is good. Reply can trick you though so always remember to verify with the customer that they are getting a reply from the address they pinged. For example if they typed in "ping 4.2.2.2" make sure to ask the customer if they see a reply from 4.2.2.2 and not some other number. What can happen with the reply is that a different address could reply to tell you that the address you wanted to get to is not available. So always remember to be sure that the reply is coming from the address you typed. Request Timed Out. This one normally means that the computer and the router know where the address is, but just cannot get there. Unknown Host. Means that the computer has no idea what or who you are trying to ping. this one means you have a long way to go to get the network up and running. Destination Network / Host unreachable. Means that the ping does not know how to get to its destination. Hardware Error. Typically means that your adapter is disabled or you have unplugged the cable.
A few top scenarios of when to Ping:
Ping to verify connectivity to the Router. Ping 192.168.1.1 Ping to verify connections to other computers on the network (make sure firewalls are disabled though). Ping from the PC to the internet by number. Use 4.2.2.2 or 8.8.8.8 to check if the router is online. (This is useful when the router status page shows an IP address from the ISP on the status page, but cannot browse any websites). Ping from the PC to yahoo.com to verify full Internet Connectivity. If you can ping yahoo.com and get replies, but the PC cannot browse, that tells you that there is a PC issue not a router issue.
What does Ping really tell me?
Some common things ping can tell you are:
If you try to ping your router from a computer on the LAN and you get destination host unreachable. That tells you that your PC is not getting an IP address from the router (from here you can investigate the IP settings on the device and verify the connections). If you are able to ping the router, but you get destination host unreachable when trying to ping the internet, that could tell you that the ISP is not giving your router an IP address. So you will look for issues with the internet connection. If you are able to ping the router, and able to ping 4.2.2.2 but you get unknown host as a reply when you try to ping yahoo.com that tells you that your router is getting an IP address it is connected to the internet, but there is an issue with DNS (domain name server). Usually releasing and renewing the IP address on the PC or setting a static DNS address on the PC will fix this issue. If you are able to ping the router, the internet at 4.2.2.2 and yahoo.com successfully, but a PC cannot browse any websites. That could tell you that there is an issue with the browser. Maybe there is a proxy server enabled in the Internet Settings, or perhaps there are some strange security settings causing troubles on that PC. Or even worse it could have a Virus. From there you can try another browser on the PC or move to another PC to prove to the customer that it is a PC issue.
The Wrap Up:
There are many other things ping can tell you as well, but I just wanted to share these top scenarios to provide a quick refresher to everyone. Overall Ping is a very helpful tool that often gets overlooked lately because people want to use the GUI within windows to troubleshoot.
While using the GUI seems less stressful it can be more time consuming, and it does not really provide you with the feedback that you need to truly isolate the customer issue.
So I challenge each of you to open up that DOS window and start pinging away to try to isolate network and connectivity issues on a regular basis. Making ping a part of your standard troubleshooting arsenal will greatly improve your success rates when working on connectivity issues for both wired and wireless computers.
