PowerPing

While the classic Windows ping utility is quite powerful on its own, there is always room for improvement. There are a number of arguments you can use in your commands, but you may need to resort to a third-party app for certain operations.

PowerPing is a lightweight command-line program that, in addition to letting you ping various hosts, allows you to obtain location info and customize the ping packet messages. Moreover, it colorizes the results for easier reading.

As expected, you can ping a target by simply entering its address, and it is also possible to specify how many pings should be sent, set the timeout time, time to live and interval between packages. The utility lets you ping the target until stopped, and you have the option of forcing IPv4.

However, PowerPing also allows you to change the default ping message, and it colorizes the results based on their status. Because of this, it is much easier to find successful pings and timeouts when scrolling.

You can find your current public IP address, as well as other relevant location data, using an online service, by just entering a short command.

Moreover, PowerPing can provide useful information about any other domain, such as its IP address, country, region, city, zip code, time zone and coordinates.

It is clear that this application provides you with some very helpful features, such as location data, ICMP packet info and result colorization. Make sure you run it in Administrator mode though, as you will not be able to send pings otherwise.

If you find that the Windows ping utility does not provide you with all the tools you need, PowerPing may be the solution. It functions in pretty much the same fashion, but the extra features it offers make it a worthwhile alternative.