PING is a utility program that sends a small message to a remote computer to check if the remoter computer is on-line and it reports how long it took for the message to be echoed back. It is usually used as a test to determine if the computer has working TCP/IP network installed and can reach the Internet. It is also used to determine if the response time of a remote computer is small enough to support a multiplayer game.
All Windows operating systems come with a command line PING application called PING.EXE. A GUI PING utitlity WSPING32.EXE is shown in Figure 45.
All Windows operating systems come with a command line Trace application called TRACERT.EXE.
WSPING32 tracing the Microsoft web site is shown in the next figure.
Figure 45. WSPING32 tracing the Microsoft Web site