To Ping or Not To Ping

By Karen Orsi

OK, I was all set to do some nice pinging – after all, I am as fascinated with the technical side of the internet as much as the creative side. I am one of those who will wake up at 3:30am, thinking “How does that web site I just created really get to the client? What if someone trips over an ethernet cord in serverland, and the site goes down? Will they know it was just a cord that came loose?” Then, I'll go, maybe look up some information on how it all works. This is one of the reasons this class is so great!

So, I've reviewed the web videos, took notes, and the hazy fog of how parts of the OSI works is starting to lift. Assignment: Ping. I'm excited, I already have ideas of what sites I'd like to Ping, Google.com, as was shown in the video, kind of as a standard to test the others against. Then there are the client sites, do I maybe have too many graphics on the sites, are they slow to ping? How will 3pm vs. 3am show up? Then some popular sites, like whitehouse.gov (oops, that one may need the www infront of it, since the sites probably been around for a long time!).

On my Windows Vista laptop (if I hadn't worked 19 years previously in corporate America, I'm sure I would have started with a Mac, but all that software they offered me for free...), I go to Start/Run, and then the process of trying to get a ping. I just type “ping” into the “run” window, and the screen seems to disappear in a millisecond. So, I go to what I affectionately call the “geek forums” to see what they have to say. “Just type “CMD”, you'll be all set. So I type in CMD, then PING, and get what looks to be a helpful set of instructions, and type in google.com, and “is not recognized as an internal or external command” is returned. Hmm....back to the forums.  “Type CMD in the search area, right-click on CMD.EXE, then, CTRL>SHIFT>ENTER, and your home free.” Not so much...

More forums, and they mention it could be the firewall. Disable the firewall, same result. All I want to do is ping, that's all! Sounds so simple. So I review the notes I took from the video, everything looks right. That's it, I need to delve deeper into the forums. Be right back...

GOT IT! Found one more forum that mentioned typing in “ping google.com” with space in between ping and google. I've been living in the web world, where no spaces should exist with file names, either underscores, dashes, or no spaces. Needless to say, I tried all three. So I just pinged google.com, and received similar results as the video. Then pinged overflower.com (a client site), and it was twice as long. Maybe those pictures are too large after all! Then, I ping itstwilightmusic.com (a redirect to overflower.com), just to see if it works, and it does, similar results to overflower.com, of course.

Whew! Relief washes over me, realizing I figured out how to ping in Vista, within an hours time, as opposed to some of the technical issues that can take several hours. Am I getting better at this problem solving the technical issues? Maybe a little. I think each time you have to look something like this up, the brain has to fire on different “wires” as it tries to solve the problem. The issue of trust comes up of course, as we search these issues in Google, and hope the geek forum is legitimate. Seeing the posts from many other folks in the same boat adds an instant trust factor, and also an “I'm not so clueless after all” factor. 

So, my view of ping has been immediately colored by the time spent trying to figure out how to use ping. I'm a big believer in  the “it's not the destination, but the journey” philosophy, so none of this is time wasted. It's time that has to be explained, of course, when your employer or client is like “You haven't finished that YET? Don't you just have to put the thing in the box and it works?!” Learning the beginning parts of the OSI definitely reinforces the “Sorry, it's not just putting a thing in a box and it will work!” school of thought. And, with my limited time using ping, it kind of reminds me of the geek forums. It's that comforting voice on the other side, telling you “yeah, got it”.

I do wonder how reliable ping really is. Do we know if there is a lag time? Should 2ms be added onto every ping, to be truly accurate? These are small things to worry about, or are they? Maybe right now, it doesn't seem to matter how accurate it is (and I have no current info indicating it is not accurate), but as things get faster, maybe super fast lightening speed of sound fast, this technology will seem particularly antiquated.

The more I ponder it, I give the ping option a big thumbs up. I can think of immediate uses, such as when I can't seem to connect to a client's server, this would be a great way to see if the basics are there. It's a fun “parlor trick” too, as far as the “Yes I know what I am doing” factor. Some clients love to see that programming-looking black screen opened, in order to solve a problem. Kind of like opening the hood of a car, flipping a switch, and the thing starts. You come out a hero (unless it doesn't work!).

More questions, as I wonder if several people are trying to ping the same site at the same time, it adds milliseconds. These are good questions, I think. The curiosity is peaked, and the learning continues...