How to Understand Ping Results
The images below are an example of the sort of results that you will receive when you ping an IP address.
Pinging to an IP address that responds
Pinging an IP and getting Time out
Ping Results Explained:
- Reply from: By default, windows will send four ping messages (one on each line) and then shows you the outcome of each of the four messages.
- Bytes: Each ping message request is 32 bytes in size. This is a default setting.
- Time: This shows the round trip amount of time in milliseconds (8ms = 0.008seconds). Round trip is the time from when the ping message was sent and how long it took before the reply came back.
- TTL (Time-to-Live): The TTL value represents the maximum number of IP routers that the packet can go through before being thrown away. Currently, each router that the packet travels/hops through will decrement the TTL field by exactly one. Windows default TTL is 64 therefore if you ping a device on your local home wireless/network then the ping will not cross any routers and the TTL should remain at the default. As you can see from the google.com ping example (above) the TTL went down to 52 so the packet had to hop across a few routers before it got to google.com.
- Request Timeout: The destination IP/hostname or website did not respond. This could be due to a number of reasons such as; the device does not exist, is not powered on or is configured not to reply to ping requests. You can create a rule in windows firewall to stop you PC/Laptop from replying to Pings. Some websites or online resources do this via a commercial firewall so that hacker cannot target their systems. If a device does not respond to ping then a hack may pressure that the IP address/hostname they are pinging does not exist and they may move on till they find something that does so that they can then start targeting attacks to that IP address.
- What is Ping and the possible cause of errors
- Ping command syntax and parameters