How Does PING work

May 16, 2008 09:14pm pdt

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02.19.2008 at 06:52AM PST, ID: 23174437

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7.6

How Does PING work

Zone: Apple Networking

When you have a host file or DNS, and you use PING command to ping a machine that is onlthe network or off the network, how does the communication circuit work in either case.?
for example when you ping a remote machine which is powerd off , and you have that machine hostname and IP in the DNS or in the host file, would your computer look for the record first or until it receives something from the remote machine then it looks for the record in the DNS or host file?

do you understand what I mean? I need kind of explanation about the whole process of PING command.

Thanks

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Question Stats

Zone: Apple

Question Asked By: jskfan

Solution Provided By: strung

Participating Experts: 4

Solution Grade: A

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02.19.2008 at 06:58AM PST, ID: 20928880

2PiFL:

A good paper:
http://images.globalknowledge.com/wwwimages/whitepaperpdf/WP_Mays_Ping.pdf

Assisted Solution

02.19.2008 at 07:13AM PST, ID: 20929036

Rank: Guru

strung:

I am not sure exactly what it is you want to know or what problem you are having. If you ping an other computer, your computer sends a packet to that computer. If that computer is connected to the network and turned on, it will receive the ping packet. If the other computer (or an intervening firewall) is not set to reject pings, the other computer will respond to the ping and let your computer know the ping was received and and your computer will recorde what the round trip time was.

02.19.2008 at 07:31AM PST, ID: 20929270

Geyybecca:

to answer your question it really depends what command you issue when you ping

thus if you trying to ping 'computername' it will first try to resolve that name to an IP using what methods are open to it, IE DNS, WINS, host, broadcast etc it will do this BEFORE it trys to communicate with the device. If however you type ping IPADDRESS with no switches then it will simple attempt to send 4 packets to that IP address.

In reality your question is a combination of how PING works and how name resolution works

02.19.2008 at 11:47AM PST, ID: 20931851

jskfan:

if the record is still in DNS or host file and the remote computer is powered off.

then I use:

Ping -a computername
would this give me the IP address of the remoter computer, since it has a DNS record for it ??

Ping Ipaddess
would this give me the remoter computer name , since it has a DNS record for it?

02.19.2008 at 11:51AM PST, ID: 20931890

Rank: Guru

strung:

Pinging by name should give you the IP address. Pinging by IP address will not give you the name.

If you want the name from the IP address for someplace on the internet, go to http://network-tools.com/ click on the radio button beside LOOKUP and type in the IP address.

02.19.2008 at 12:11PM PST, ID: 20932072

Geyybecca:

you use ping -a to obtain the address when pinging an IP address, you can do this for both remote and local addresses providing you have a DNS server configured on your client machine

02.19.2008 at 12:19PM PST, ID: 20932163

jskfan:

strung:
<<<Pinging by name should give you the IP address. Pinging by IP address will not give you the name. >>>

where does it get the Ip address from???? from the DNS??? if so why it doesn't get the name when you ping the IP??

02.19.2008 at 12:22PM PST, ID: 20932196

Rank: Guru

strung:

If you look at Gevybecca's post above and my reply, you will see that I was wrong and it will work both ways.

02.19.2008 at 12:26PM PST, ID: 20932229

Rank: Guru

strung:

Gevybecca is right (although ping -a appears to work even if the DNS server is not on your local machine). Learn something new every day!

02.19.2008 at 12:28PM PST, ID: 20932241

Rank: Guru

strung:

By the way, why don't you just try it yourself and see?

02.19.2008 at 12:33PM PST, ID: 20932300

jskfan:

the point of my question is what is involved during the PING operation.
if the remote computer is powered off, and you ping it , would the PING go the DNS and retrieve any information or it will just send a request to the powered off computer and will receive a time out.
I want sort of a Road Map of the PING command.

02.19.2008 at 12:39PM PST, ID: 20932350

Rank: Guru

strung:

I just tried pinging my home computer which is off. Ping IP address did not return a name, but ping -a IP address did return the name. Tracert IP address also returned the name.

Accepted Solution

02.19.2008 at 01:10PM PST, ID: 20932619

jskfan:

You are still missing the point of my question:
if the remote computer is powered off, and you ping it , would the PING go to the DNS and retrieve any information or it will just send a request to the powered off computer and will receive a time out.
I want sort of a Road Map of the PING command.

02.19.2008 at 01:17PM PST, ID: 20932689

Geyybecca:

I believe I answered this question earlier, to clarify, if you ping a machine that is powered off.

1) ping *.*.*.* (Any ip address) packets would be sent directly to the machine in question and as the machine is switched off no reply would be received

2) Ping -a *.*.*.* (Any Ip address) providing you have a DNS server configured the name would be resolved but no reply would be received if machine is powered off

3) Ping machinename an attempt to resolve this name to an ip address would be made through any means configured be it HOST, WINS, DNS or broardcast (NOTE no requirement for name resolution is needed of the machine you are pinging) again if machine is off then while the name would be resolved to an IP address no reply would be recieved

Assisted Solution

02.21.2008 at 06:12AM PST, ID: 20947801

jskfan:

so the PING Tries to communicate with the remote machine then to DNS or to DNS then to the remote machine?

03.01.2008 at 09:48AM PST, ID: 21022683

jskfan:

can anyone answer this:

the PING Tries to communicate with the remote machine then to DNS or to DNS then to the remote machine?

03.05.2008 at 11:40AM PST, ID: 21053637

jskfan:

any updates ??????

j_mcmillan

04.18.2008 at 08:36AM PDT, ID: 21386753

You cannot ping a hostname, they only exist to make life easy for us humans and are useless when generating an ICMP packet. The hostname must be resolved to an IP address through whatever available means before the ICMP echo request is generated and sent off to the target host.

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