Fragmentation
By default, Ping requests can be fragmented. However, you can stop the fragmentation using –f option. This is useful to determine the MTU as described previously.
Record Routes and Timestamp for count hops
One of the useful information when troubleshooting routing is to know the hops used to reach or not the destination. Ping has two options for that: -r to record routes for count hops (The value should be between 1 and 9) and –s for the timestamp for count hops (The value should be between 1 and 4). However, using tracert instead remains a better and a recommended option to get this information.
Loose and Strict source route
Loose and Strict Source route: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_Source_Routing
Ping has the capability to do a:
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A Loose Source Routing using –j option where you need to specify the IP addresses for the route delimited by spaces
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A Strict Source Routing using –k option where you need to specify the IP addresses for the route delimited by spaces
Source address to use
In case you would like to specify a specific source address for the Ping request, you can use –S option and specify the source IP address.
Forcing IPv4 or IPv6
You can force IPv4 in Ping by using -4 option and IPv6 by using -6 option.
Timeout
By default, Ping has a timeout which is equal to 4000 milliseconds (4seconds) that is used to identify if the destination in unreachable. This could be changed by using –w switch and specifying a new value for the timeout in milliseconds.
Conclusion
Ping is an amazing tool, provided as part of Windows Systems. It is very helpful for investigating connectivity issues / status. While it is a very basic tool, it has many helpful options. This article have described most of these options and is designated for beginners to help them to have a better understanding of the tool.
See Also
Using the ping command |