PING.EXE


Another essential item in your network troubleshooting toolkit is the Packet Internet Groper (PING) utility. This utility sends small packets of information to a destination computer to verify network connectivity between the two systems. It is analogous to the way submarines use sonara small chunk of sound is sent out through the water, and an unseen ship's existence is confirmed when the sound bounces back to the originating sub.

Similarly, if you ping a target computer, and that computer responds, you've just verified that the two computers can communicate; you've proven that the sender and receiver can exchange TCP/IP packets. Therefore, other types of communication should work as well. Well, sort of. If you can't ping, then very little else will work, but even if you can ping, there's still an awful lot that can go wrong.

In any event, the syntax of the PING command is this:


PING IP Addressor computername

IP address would be the target's address (which you might not know), and computername is a name like www.microsoft.com or beanlake. The full command would look something like this: ping 192.168.1.100.

You Can't Just Go Around Pinging Everything

One very simple hack of a server is to flood it with PING traffic: the server is overwhelmed with PING data and crashes. Therefore, most popular Web servers are protected by firewalls that block indiscriminate pinging. So even though you can surf to www.microsoft.com, thus proving that the two computers can communicate, you won't be able to PING their Web server.

When communication fails, you should Ping in the following order:

1.

Ping the local computer's IP address, testing whether TCI/IP has been correctly bound to the network card.

2.

Ping the default gateway, testing your ability to get outside the local network.

3.

Ping the remote computer you are trying to reach, testing whether that computer has an active network connection.




Spring Into Windows XP Service Pack 2
Spring Into Windows XP Service Pack 2
ISBN: 013167983X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 275
Authors: Brian Culp

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