An Internet can be a large and complex aggregation of network hardware, connected together by gateways. Tracking a single-point hardware or software failure can be difficult. The Ping program utilises the ICMP protocol's mandatory ECHO_REQUEST datagram to elicit an ICMP ECHO_RESPONSE from a host or gateway. ECHO_REQUEST datagrams (or pings) have an IP and ICMP header, and then an arbitrary number of padding bytes used to fill out the packet.
When using Ping for fault isolation you should first run it on your local host, to verify that your local network interface is up and running. Then you should 'ping' hosts and gateways that are further and further away.
If you don't give a count the Ping program sends just one datagram and expects a single ECHO_RESPONSE to be returned. If you give a count Ping sends one datagram per second up to that number, and prints one line of output for every ECHO_RESPONSE returned. No output is produced if there is no response.
Packet loss statistics are computed and a brief summary is displayed when all responses have been received, or when the program times out, or when you terminate the program.
RISC OS Ping messages are not time-stamped.
*Ping [-r] [-v] <host> [<packetsize>] [<count>]
'host' parameter
an Internet host specified either by name (which must be present in the host name data base <InetDBase$Path>hosts) or by address (using the standard Internet dot notation)
'packetsize' parameter
the size of packet to send (default is 64 bytes)
'count' parameter
the number of packets to send (default is 1)
'r' parameter
The optional -r parameter makes the Ping program bypass the normal routing tables and send directly to a host on an attached network. (If the host is not on a directly attached network an error is returned.) You can use this option to 'ping' a local host through an interface that has no route through it.
'v' parameter
The optional -v parameter causes verbose output: any ICMP packets other than ECHO RESPONSE that are received are listed.
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