Internet, Networking, & Security Home Networking 94 94 people found this article helpful How to Ping a Computer or a Website Ping an IP address to check a website's status by Bradley Mitchell Writer An MIT graduate who brings years of technical experience to articles on SEO, computers, and wireless networking. our editorial process LinkedIn Bradley Mitchell Updated on January 23, 2021 reviewed by Jon Fisher Lifewire Tech Review Board Member Jonathan Fisher is a CompTIA certified technologist with more than 6 years' experience writing for publications like TechNorms and Help Desk Geek. our review board Article reviewed on Feb 15, 2020 Jon Fisher Tweet Share Email Home Networking ISP The Wireless Connection Routers & Firewalls Network Hubs Broadband Ethernet Installing & Upgrading Wi-Fi & Wireless What to Know On any platform, open the ping utility and type ping. Ping works from a command prompt in Windows or a terminal window in Mac.If the ping was successful, you'll see a results summary. If the ping fails, it may mean the IP address is invalid or the host isn't connected.In Windows, type ping -t at the command line to launch the program in continuously running mode to monitor a connection's status. This article explains how to use the ping utility to send a test message from the local client to a remote target over the TCP/IP network connection. The target can be a website, a computer, or any other device with an IP address. How to Ping an IP Address Ping works the same across all platforms. Open the utility, then type ping. Ping works from a shell prompt, sometimes called a terminal window. In Windows, use either Command Prompt or PowerShell to access ping. Ellen Lindner / Lifewire Interpreting the Results of Ping A typical ping session finds the requested server then returns statistics: Reply from: By default, Microsoft Windows ping sends a series of four messages to the address. The program outputs a confirmation line for each response message received from the target computer.Bytes: Each ping request is 32 bytes in size by default.Time: Ping reports the amount of time (in milliseconds) between the sending of requests and receipt of responses.TTL (Time-to-Live): Set by the system that's sending the ping command. It can be set to any value between 1 and 255. Different OSs set different defaults. Each router that receives the packet subtracts at least 1 from the number. If it remains greater than 0, the router forwards the packet, otherwise, it discards it and sends an ICMP message back to the host. Running Ping Continuously On some computers (particularly those running Linux), the standard ping program does not stop running after four request attempts but instead runs until the user ends it. That behavior is useful for monitoring the status of a network connection over longer periods of time. In Microsoft Windows, type ping -t instead of ping at the command line to launch the program in this continuously running mode (and use the Control-C key sequence to stop it). Ping an IP Address That Does Not Respond In some cases, ping requests fail. This happens for any of several reasons: The IP address specified by the ping program is invalid.The host system (device being used to send pings) is not connected to an IP network (i.e., does not have a working IP address).No network device is connected to the target IP address.Network congestion or errors in between the host and target are preventing messages from passing through (in one or both directions). Each Reply from line takes several seconds to appear on the screen as the program waits and eventually times out. The IP address referenced in each reply line of the output is the address of the pinging (host) computer. Intermittent Ping Responses Though uncommon, it is possible for ping to report a response rate other than 0 percent (fully unresponsive) or 100 percent (fully responsive). This result appears most often when the target system is shutting down or starting up. You're free to use a computer name rather than an IP address with the ping command. For example, type ping lifewire.com to ping a Lifewire server. You lose the precision of knowing which server you're targeting, but as a fast-and-easy method to determine whether your internet connection works, this trick is hard to beat. Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Email Address Sign up There was an error. Please try again. You're in! Thanks for signing up. There was an error. Please try again. Thank you for signing up. Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit