How To Ping an IP Address

When you “ping” an IP address, you’re basically asking a computer, “Hey, are you getting this?”. Ideally, there should be a response. If there isn’t, there might be something wrong with your connection or with the server itself.

A ping doesn’t necessarily need to include an IP address. You can also use the ping command with domains. The connection will resolve through the Domain Name System (DNS) and you’ll get the same result:

Ping google.com

If the ping is successful, the terminal will show multiple responses from the IP address, each with a time in milliseconds. These times represent the “latency” of the connection. Low latency means that the end server is responding quickly to the data transfer (which is a good thing).

If the ping isn’t successful, you won’t see these results. Instead, the connection will simply time out: