The first ping program was written by Mike Muuss in December 1983 for use on Unix machines. Muuss named his program after the sonar sounds used for echolocation by submarines, although some say ping stands for "Packet InterNet Grouper". Ping sends a small packet of information containing an ICMP ECHO_REQUEST to a specified computer, which then sends an ECHO_REPLY packet in return. The ping program then evaluates this reply, and a report is shown. You can check several things with the ping program: can you reach another computer, how long does it take to bounce a packet off of ... [ read more about Fping >> ]