The purpose of this tutorial is to teach you how to do a ping. Pinging is a command which tells you if the connection between your computer and a particular domain is working properly.
There are a couple of different ways to get to the Command Prompt screen.
- In Windows, select the Start button, usually found in the left hand corner, select All Programs, then go to Accessories, and there you will find command prompt.
- You can also get there by clicking on the start button, and selecting the RUN command from the right hand column.
- Once selected, type "cmd" (without the quotes) and click OK.
- Either way will open the Command Prompt box.
- Enter the word ping, followed by a space, then the domain name you are checking. Press Enter.
- The results should show a series of replies, which means the connection is working.
- The time shows how fast he connection is. However, if you should see a "timed out" error instead of a reply, that means there is a break in the connection somewhere between your computer and the domain.
- Your next step would be to do a traceroute, and find out where the breakdown is.
This concludes this tutorial. You now know how and why you would need to do a ping.
