Ping is a useful tool you can use to check to see if your domain/website is reachable from your location. Some support requests require that you collect ping results and submit them along with your ticket.
Using Windows
- Open the command prompt.
- Enter the ping command followed by your domain name.
- Click the ‘Enter’ key.
- The command, and results, appear in the following:
[server]$ ping dreamhost.com Pinging dreamhost.com [192.237.181.248] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 192.237.181.248: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=49 Reply from 192.237.181.248: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=49 Reply from 192.237.181.248: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=49 Reply from 192.237.181.248: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=49 Ping statistics for 192.237.181.248: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milliseconds: Minimum = 59ms, Maximum = 59ms, Average = 59ms
About Pathping
Windows also has a command you can run called 'pathping'. This tool is useful as it basically combines Traceroute and ping together. Pathping runs the same as ping syntax – simply run 'pathping' instead of just 'ping'.
Pathping takes much longer to complete than running these two commands separately.
Ping along with Traceroute are helpful tools to assist you in determining the cause of connection problems. If these tools fail, comparing results between your site and a reliable site (such as Google) can be extremely valuable in determining whether the problem is your computer, your ISP, or your site.
Using Mac OSX and Linux
The procedure is slightly different for Apple Mac OSX and Linux: namely, these operating systems continue to ping until you tell it to stop. Instead, use the following command which tells it to ping only ten times:
[server]$ ping -c 10
- Review the Mac SSH article to open your terminal.
- Run the following command:
[server]$ ping -c 10 dreamhost.com
