Ping test

A ping test measures the amount of time that it takes for packets to travel from a host computer to an internet destination and back. The time will be shown in milliseconds. [When data is transmitted on the internet it will be broken into different packets. Each packet has a header and payload. The header will have the sending and receiving IP addresses, and the protocol governing the format of the payload. The payload will have the actual content. Most packets are between 1KB and 1.5KB. Under TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) the maximum data size of a single packet is 64 KB. An alternative would be send a bitstream - individual bits of 1's and 0's from one source to a destination.]

You can run a ping test by going to start, entering cmd, and then typing in 'ping' followed by a web address.

The results will show how many packets were sent, how many were received back, and show the minimum, maximum, and average time for each packet to make the round trip.

You may receive a 'Request Timed Out' message if a network's firewall is set up to block ping tests. The ping test is a latency test - it shows how long it takes for data to go from one location to another - this is different than bandwidth which measures the maximum amount of data that can go through a connection at a given period of time.