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Who do you ping?
ping, wireless router, zahid, wifi, ethernet
19th of January 2006
If you don't know what ping is, it's a program that tests the network connection between your computer and another host. When you run it you can see how fast the connection is but people use it mainly to test if it's even possible to make the network connection.
Often when I've had to struggle to get connected to the network (fiddling with the Ethernet cable or getting on a wifi broadcast) I often use ping to see if the internet connection works. Which host do I ping? I use www.com.
For a long time I was using www.google.com for no obvious reason. My colleague Zahid uses yahoo.com I noticed yesterday when I was leaning over his shoulder after connecting to a wireless router. So, who do you ping? (and why?)
Comment
I use google.com as I also know the IP address so I can still ping if DNS isn't resolving.
Same as Erwin: First the DNS server of the ISP (which I have as an IP number), because it allows me to check if I have a connection even if I don't have a proper DNS setup.
Maybe the connection is broken from the ISP to the greater Net, then this test should still respond.
Then doing a dig to see if DNS works. Then pinging betabug.ch which is a poor choice since it's my own server and may be down too.
av.com (altavista) or qua.cz (my remote box, if I know it's up) -- because they're each just 6 characters to type.
google and my isp dns server .. just to be sure :))
av.com as I don't think that you can do it in any less characters
I'm want to know more about ping and telnet. what more can you do by knowing an IP address
google.com for me - brandpower I guess...
It would take more than an instant of effort to think of any other url.