How to ping an IP address or a web page to check its availability? Step by step guide

To understand this, we need to clarify what each term is. IP (Internet Protocol or Internet Protocol) is a communication protocol managed via the Web. IP address is the number that identifies you on the network, because each device is assigned some kind of numeric names like license plate. This is how the Internet differentiates who is who.

These are generally of two types: static or dynamic on a computer. Regardless of the type, in some cases it is necessary to verify that the equipment or, failing that, a web page is functioning correctly, and this is done by pinging.

If you want to learn to ping an IP address or a URL to see if it's available, just read this article to be able to do so. It's extremely easy, so you don't have to be a computer technician to do it.

What is an IP address used for and what is it used for?

PING or Internet packet tracing as it is also called (Packet Internet Groper), is a command used to diagnose problems with a computer network. With this we can check and therefore know what problem we present. Well with that we will know the time it takes for an information packet to reach the IP address and vice versa. This is how we will know if the network is working, if it is down, etc.

Therefore, sometimes it is necessary to do this to ensure that the connection state of an IP address or URL is working correctly.

Most of the time, this procedure is carried out by network administrators or by users with computer skills, and they use it to dispel doubts. But, as we mentioned, it's not complicated at all, so with this guide you can easily do it.

It should be noted that all systems work the same, the only thing that varies is where the access menu is, which means there is no special way to read an answer to it.

In case this error, it could mean a lot of things, the main one would be that the site is down. To confirm that this is true, you might want to ping from another computer. Likewise, you can choose to try to do this with an IP address from an online service.

On the other hand, your computer may have connectivity issues, here you will just have to go into the browser and find out if you have a stable connection or ping other sites. We will notice all of this if it throws a message like "Time out" or if any of the packages were not completed or were lost in the process.

What methods are there to "ping" a website?

There are different ways of pinging, each of them allows you to test the connection and speed between two nodes.

Then, we explain them here:

From the system terminal

You can run it from different operating systems, people with basic knowledge know how to do such a test without needing to use a third party tool.

All you have to do is go to the computer command and type in the word "ping" followed by the website. This will display the result and 4 packets that make up the data to the destination terminal to which they are directed using the IP address or domain name. We will see how to do it later.

Online

You can test the availability of a website from the page "Site24x7.com", it just click where it says "Check the availability of the site". With it, you can monitor the performance it has, know the DNS resolution period, connection time, first and last byte time, as well as response time.

From a mobile device

As we well know, Android does not have a terminal, but there is a way to ping these devices. To do this, we need to download and install an application called "Shell Terminal Emulator". It is one of the most popular and available on the Play Store. With it, you can enter the Shell on the Linux command line built into your system.

La same thing happens on iPhone , we need to use an external app to ping, in this case we will use "Network Ping Lite". In particular, it is used for software testing to debug network problems on a local area network. The results are displayed as colors, green means everything is working fine, yellow means there is a problem, and red means it is no longer on the network.

Tracert or Traceroute

This could be seen as a complementary method to the utilities offered by the ping command. Well, it performs pretty much the same function that we mention in this article, but it provides data in more detail.

It will give us information such as ping when sending a packet to the destination, but also the path of these, the time it takes for each jump and the hosts he visits to reach the place.

This is done as follows:

On windows

You just have to go in "Start"> "Run", type "Cmd" And click "OKAY".

• At the command line, enter the word tracert followed by a space and the domain name; for example: domain.com then Enter.
• It will look like this: "Tracert google.com" .

On macOS

Go to « Applications ”>“ Utilities ”>“ Network Utility ”>“ Traceroute ”.

• Write the domain or IP address where it says "Please enter the address to perform the tracing" And click "Trace".

On linux

Go to "Applications"> "Accessories" and "Terminal".

• Type traceroute -I domain.com. The -I option is essential for the traceroute to use ICMP.
• It will look like this: "Traceroute -I google.com."

Steps to ping a web page to find out its status

We can use this command to check the connectivity of a network or measure its slowness when communicating with two remote points. Also on the Internet to find out the IP address used by a domain name, check the connectivity of a server and check the connection of a computer.

On windows

These steps are the same for all operating systems, i.e. Windows 10, 8 and 7.

• The first thing to do is go into "Start" and search for the command "Execute", there you will write "Cmd" in the corresponding field and click on «OK» .

• This will open a system window. In this you are going to place an example of "Ping" and you will press the space bar followed by the IP address or URL of the page. For example: "Ping www.google.com"

• If you want to do this with your router, you will need to enter the corresponding number in this case. Examples: "Ping 192.168.1.1". Then you need to press enter.

If this is active, you will receive the response from the server with information similar to this one where it will be displayed:

• Google's IP address, which in this case would be "216.58.192.36" and the number of bytes sent.
• After that he send 4 additional packets where the above is specified, along with the time it took in milliseconds and the lifetime. The latter indicates the number of "hops" it made from the PING computer to the initial server.
• Finally, the complete information indicating the result is returned. That 4 packets have been sent, all 4 have been received, and therefore none have been lost in the process.

It should be noted that the less time it takes to complete the process, the better. Since then, the more milliseconds, the higher the slow state. This means that there is a problem between the computer and the server on which the PING was performed.

Mac OS

In this case, we will use the "Network utility".

• The first thing to do is to open the "Spotlight", it looks like a magnifying glass in the upper right corner of the screen.

• Then type in the search bar "Network Utility" and click on the icon. You can also find it in the folder "Applications" MacOS.

• Once opened, click on "Ping" at the top of the window.
• Enter the URL you want and want to ping in the empty text box. For example: google.com. If you want to do it with a computer, you just have to do the same, but entering the IP address.

You can then configure to ping the selected URL a certain number of times. To do this, proceed as follows:

• Check the box "Send only ___ ping". You will write the amount you want to use there, then click the blue button "Ping."It should be noted that this cannot be more than 10.

• It will show the evidence. Similar to those already seen above.

With this, you will get a feel for the connection between your team and management. If any of these tests fail or fail, you will need to resolve your internet connection problems first.

Linux

We will do this process through the window "Terminal".

• The first thing to do is go into "Applications"> "Accessories" and "Terminal". You can also use the "Ctrl + Alt + T" keys at the same time to access it directly.

• Once in the "Terminal", you will write "ping" followed by a space and the URL of the site. For example: www.facebook.com.
• After pressing "Entrance" , the ping results will be returned.

• As in the previous cases, this will indicate the milliseconds required for the target computer to respond to your request data and the rest of the information.

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments, we will get back to you as soon as possible, and it will be a great help for more community members as well. Thank you!